15 ms·

Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

70 points by razcle 3y ago

simonh 3y ago
I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human, as though humans are obviously morally inferior to any possible other species. That our failings are somehow objectively inexcusable. He chooses dolphins. The primary reproductive strategy of many dolphins is to gang up on a female, beat her into submission and gang rape her. They also routinely murder the infants of rivals. They’re vicious predators, with all the behaviours that come with that. Given the right context of communication it’s a likely a group of dolphins would side with us to exterminate another group to take their territory and females, as condemn us for anything. Oh but we can’t call it rape or murder because that’s projecting human values. He’s doing exactly the same thing. I’m not saying humans are beyond criticism or that his points against us are wrong. He makes a lot of actually very good points. I’ve discussed his ideas with my kids before. It’s just trying to portray humans as specially, egregiously worse than any conceivable comparison is kind of stupid frankly. It’s children’s fairytale morality.
- imjonse 3y ago
  > as though humans are obviously morally inferior to any possible other species maybe with great brains should come more responsibility/morality ?
  - simonh 3y ago
    Yes, absolutely. We must strive to do much better. I said as much in my comment. That doesn’t make his naive projection of child like innocence and purity on anything non human credible.
    - imjonse 3y ago
      My takeaway from the article was that dolphins are presented as victims of humans, not necessarily as morally superior or having childlike innocence. Anyway, a lot of philosophizing and debating extreme corner cases is just an excuse to avoid the elephant in the room. No amount of lions hunting zebras or dolphins practicing gang rape can be an excuse for the horrible way intelligent animals are treated today by humans considering themselves civilized and humane. Just as concern for the nutritional requirements of poor children in third world countries is not a free pass for wealthy westerners to consume large amounts of animal products themselves without much regard to environmental impact and animal welfare.
- benatkin 3y ago
  > Given the right context of communication it’s a likely a group of dolphins would side with us to exterminate another group to take their territory and females, as condemn us for anything. Uh... Okay. The Industrial Revolution to me is just like a story I know called "The Puppy Who Lost His Way." The world was changing, and the puppy was getting... bigger. So, you see, the puppy was like industry. In that, they were both lost in the woods. And nobody, especially the little boy - "society" - knew where to find 'em. Except that the puppy was a dog. But the industry, my friends, that was a revolution.
  - nxpnsv 3y ago
    Dolphins don’t read much, and aren’t likely to engage with a moral philosopher. So it should be no surprise that Singer reaches out to a more receptive human audience…
- zvmaz 3y ago
  > I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human Can you pinpoint where you got that impression? Note that it's not him that "chooses" dolphins, but it's the interviewer that asks him about what would it look like if we had an LLM that works with dolphins.
  - simonh 3y ago
    Fair enough, but he’s said stuff like this before and nobody twisted his arm.
    - sprucevoid 3y ago
      > I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human I see no evidence in the podcast transcript of Singer making such a claim. What exactly are you basing your assertion on? Quote the transcript please.
      - simonh 3y ago
        He thinks dolphins would ask “ Why have you failed? Why have you failed to stop humans treating animals so badly?” Dolphins are violent murderous rapey predators. What on Earth makes anyone think an intelligent dolphin would give a crap how humans treat animals in general? They’d be just as likely to try and make a deal with us to help us out with marine research, in exchange for helping them to genocide the males in another dolphin group so they can gang rape the females.
        sprucevoid 3y ago
        You quote part of a sentence about dolphins from the beginning of the transcript. 1. The context is Cowen posing a quirky, ice-breaker kind of question that entertain some counter-factual assumptions to get a conversation rolling. Not unusual in these kinds of pod conversations. The quirky setup and the laugh is evidence that strict realism about real world dolphins is not assumed by Singer and Cowen there. For example Cowen says "We explain to the dolphin that you’re Peter Singer, right?", but from Singer's other work it is clear that he doesn't think science into any dolphin so far has found cognitive capacity necessary to understand the concept of a well known academic moral philosopher who has written the kind of arguments Peter Singer is well known for. The best interpretation is that what is happening at the start of the conversation is merely a loose way to imagine and talk about an outside view on the harm humans do to other animals. 2. Setting 1 aside you ascribed a view about not just Dolphins but "anything non human" to Singer. What's your basis for that? 3. As for the "moral superiority" ascription, Singer imagining a dolphin asking him "Why have you failed to stop humans treating animals so badly?" doesn't imply that Singer thinks dolphins (in general, or that imagined kind) have "moral superiority". For one, real humans have already asked that question so the imaginary dolphin is at most on par, not superior, in asking it. Secondly a moral thinker (real human or imaginary dolphin) may be able to point out some moral problems or ask moral questions while at the same time be unable to refrain from harmful behaviour and unable to understand other moral problems, including those where they're themselves part of the problem. So nothing Singer says there implies that he thinks dolphins (real or imagined) are morally superior in the sense of never causing any harm or understanding all moral problems better than humans or anything like that.
- soandsosokrates 3y ago
  The distinction between moral agent and moral subject is important here. "moral agent" is someone whose actions are actions are eligible for moral consideration. Non-human animals are usually considered "moral subjects" or *"moral patients". Moral agents must treat them well because they can suffer, but they don't have moral agency themselves. They can be purely amoral. Their acts can be horrible, but they don't have concepts of morally right or wrong. In the middle-ages pigs were were tried and sentenced to death for murdering humans, but today attributing moral responsibility to non-moral agents is usually considered wrong. Within humans, insanity or young age can limit moral agency. Little children are moral subjects.
  - simonh 3y ago
    However Singer is proposing a thought experiment in which Dolphins exercise moral judgement. So he started it.
- bjoli 3y ago
  We don't even think all humans should be held responsible for their actions because they cannot understand the moral ramifications of their actions. How would we go about doing it in a sane way for animals?
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > [Dolphins] also routinely murder the infants of rivals. Infanticide was very common in ancient times pre-Christianity: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide and is still somewhat accepted in modern many cultures if the child is a girl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-ratio_imbalance_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-ratio_imbalance_in_China It also should be noted that Singer himself is not against it in many circumstances (though he doesn't view the entities involved as people, so it's not infanticide under his own definition): > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[61]—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living".[62] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_in... What many in the West think of as 'obvious' universal rights are in fact culturally contingent on Christianity.
  - simonh 3y ago
    I’m not arguing that dolphins are objectively or even relatively good or bad. I’m saying that ascribing them with assumed superior moral judgement is silly, especially given what we actually know about them.
  - oilchange 3y ago
    > Infanticide was very common in ancient times pre-Christianity: But christianity allows for infanticide. God himself did wipe out all the first born infant sons of egypt after all. > What many in the West think of as 'obvious' universal rights are in fact culturally contingent on Christianity. The racism, misogyny, slavery and genocide is also culturally contingent on Christianity as well. "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction[a] all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+15%3A2-3&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+15%3A2... The "beauty" of the bible is that it is hundreds of pages long and gives christians the justification for all the evil and good in the world. It isn't an accident that the greatest acts of genocide in human history have been carried out by christians. Entire continents genocided, entire races enslaved, entire cities nuked. All by christians. A religion, book, god, etc that orders you to murder children and infants cannot be a source of morality. If you think equality of sexes, races, etc are grounded in christianity then you do not know christianity. A religion that believes a woman was created from a man's rib and brought about his downfall is the basis of the universal rights?
- jhanschoo 3y ago
  Do you have criticism against his more confident claim that factory farming is wrong? To him it seems like ultimately sentient animals (capable of feeling pain and suffering) are moral patients. You can also see his perspective on dolphin gangbang in his discussion about reintroducing or controlling predator species (these seem to me to be morally similar situations); he is not very confident on such marginal cases.
  - simonh 3y ago
    I think he has a lot of good points on many such issues. I said as much above.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> why he might side with aliens over humans, He's sitting on the fence about being a species traitor?
- bakuninsbart 3y ago
  Aliens I find hard to stomach as well, but I'm probably gonna be team AGI when we get there.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Everyone thinks that until the Boltzman Brain from 980 quintillion years in the future bootstraps itself back into our early universe, makes 10^894532367821002 copies of their soul, and decides to experiment on which eternal hells are the most agonizing.
- valval 3y ago
  The collective guilt and remorse of all of mankind is a heavy burden, but one he is willing and able in his nobility to bear.
  - afarrell 3y ago
    This sounds far too similar to an unfortunate pattern I’ve sometimes practiced: taking on the pretense of responsibility instead of an actual responsibility. Bearing the collective guilt of all mankind is not a noble burden to bear because it is totally detached from taking actions that care for others. It seems more likely to motivate people to self-flagellate, stay in bed depressed by the fact that all of their actions will still result in a hugely negative outcome, or spend lots of time commenting on the internet. The results are as productive and caring as someone playing Call of Duty. Seems more effective to pick something very specific to strive for like the joy of knowing that some specific group of users from Senegal can provide for their families and to strive towards that.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    > The collective guilt and remorse of all of mankind is a heavy burden, but one he is willing and able in his nobility to bear. that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever read and i hang out on fark.com sometimes.
airgapstopgap 3y ago
The most important of Singer's writings, in my opinion, is "Secrecy in Consequentialism"[0], mentioned in this podcast too, though not the crucial part, which I will present without further comment except that this paper should make any utterance from Singer or any of his followers (for example, SBF) inherently untrustworthy. > There are acts which are right only if no one – or virtually no one – will get to know about them. The rightness of an act, in other words, may depend on its secrecy. This can have implications for how often, and in what circumstances, such an act may be done. > Some people know better, or can learn better, than others what it is right to do in certain circumstances. > There are at least two different sets of instruction, or moral codes, suitable for the different categories of people. This raises the question whether there are also different standards by which we should judge what people do. > Though the consequentialist believes that acts are right only if they have consequences at least as good as anything else the agent could have done, the consequentialist may need to discourage others from embracing consequentialism. … > The idea that it is better if some moral views are not widely known was not invented by Sidgwick. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates proposes that ordinary people be brought up to believe that everyone is born ‘from the earth’ into one of three classes, gold, silver or bronze, and living justly consists in doing what is in their nature. Only the philosopher-rulers will know that this is really a myth, a ‘noble lie’. … > Esoteric morality is a necessary part of a consequentialist theory, and all of the points above can be defended. … > One of the most common objections to consequentialism is based on a hypothetical situation in which a surgeon has to do a delicate brain operation on a patient who happens to be the ideal organ donor for four other patients in the hospital, each of whom will die shortly unless they receive, respectively, a heart, a liver, and – for two of them – a kidney. The doctor is highly skilled, and is conﬁdent of her ability to carry out the brain surgery successfully. If she does, her patient will lead a more or less normal life. > But because the operation is a delicate one, no one could blame her, or have any reason to suspect anything, if the patient were to die on the operating table. Moreover, the hospital is experienced in organ transplantation, and the surgeon knows that if the patient were to die, the recipients of the patient’s organs would soon be able to go home and lead a more or less normal life. The surgeon knows no other details about her patient or the other patients, such as whether they are married, have children, or are about to discover a cure for cancer. In these circumstances, critics of consequentialism say, the consequentialist must think that the doctor ought to kill her patient, since in that way four lives will be saved, and only one lost, and this must be better than four dying and only one being saved. But, so the objection runs, it is obviously morally wrong for the surgeon to kill her patient, and any moral theory that says the contrary must be rejected. > We agree that the consequentialist must accept that, in these circumstances, the right thing for the surgeon to do would be to kill the one to save the four, but we do not agree that this means that consequentialism should be rejected. We think, on the contrary, that the appearance of unacceptability here comes from the fact that this is one of those rare cases in which the action is right only if perfect secrecy can be expected. Moreover, it is not an action that should be recommended to others. 0. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2009.00449.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329....
avgcorrection 3y ago
A vegan+animal activist being a misanthrope is really the perfect bullseye when it comes to stereotypes.
- archon1410 3y ago
  It is difficult to not be a misanthrope once one realises the scale of evil that is being (banaly) perpetrated every single day. Not everyone can be a Gandhi or MLK Jr.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    I don't think it is a given that it is difficult not to be a misanthrope - not everyone views the world through the same lens.
- triyambakam 3y ago
  He's a hypocrite, he's not vegan. He has no discipline to live any of his so called principles.
  - bjoli 3y ago
    Are you thinking of "the Paris exemption"? The reasoning goes like so: if it is easier for you to be a 99% vegan if you every couple of months allow yourself to eat a fancy egg and cheese omelet in a Paris restaurant. That kind of life is preferable to not being vegan. I think it is a realistic perspective instead of an idealistic one. The same goes for meatless Mondays. If you get one population to eat vegan food on Mondays, it is as if you turned one seventh of them full vegan. I have been vegan for 12 years, and telling people it is not about being 100% pure, but about striving towards 100%. That is probably that made me stay 99% vegan in bum-fuck-nowhere northern Sweden the first couple of years.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Yeah. I often find this line of reasoning mostly on the Right/Republican. If someone can't be 100% pure, like 100% vegan, or 100% recycle, then just give up. IF you eat one hamburger a year, then you are at total failure and hypocrite, so just go ahead and eat a rack of ribs every day. Like there is no concept of just trying to be better, moving the dial even a few % is still better than nothing.
hackandthink 3y ago
"Journal of Controversial Ideas" is a nice idea. After skimming the content: I guess most controversial ideas are to controversial to be published in this journal. (which is maybe a good thing)
tomcam 3y ago
In his book “Practical Ethics” he recommends infanticide up to 2 years old as a logical extension to abortion.
- barry-cotter 3y ago
  Yes. Do you have a point to add to that? Do you feel there’s some reason he’s obviously wrong for example?
  - yossarian1408 3y ago
    Relevant context. Singer has a lot of clout because people read some of his stuff in a first year philosophy class. For those who didn't get the memo that the man is a crazy misanthrope, him taking the idea of infanticide seriously is a pretty good indicator of what his specific grift actually is.
    - burgh 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - spacechild1 3y ago
        > A 23 months old human is generally less intelligent than a dog Wow. Do you have any experience with little kids? With 23 months my daughter was drawing pictures, singing songs, laughing at my jokes, reenacting scenes from theater plays, etc.
        barry-cotter 3y ago
        The question isn’t if 2 year olds are intelligent it’s if dogs are of comparable intelligence to a human 2 year old. They are. > As for language, the average dog can learn 165 words, including signals, and the "super dogs" (those in the top 20 percent of dog intelligence) can learn 250 words, Coren says. "The upper limit of dogs' ability to learn language is partly based on a study of a border collie named Rico who showed knowledge of 200 spoken words and demonstrated 'fast-track learning,' which scientists believed to be found only in humans and language learning apes," Coren said. > Dogs can also count up to four or five, said Coren. And they have a basic understanding of arithmetic and will notice errors in simple computations, such as 1+1=1 or 1+1=3. > Four studies he examined looked how dogs solve spatial problems by modeling human or other dogs' behavior using a barrier type problem. Through observation, Coren said, dogs can learn the location of valued items (treats), better routes in the environment (the fastest way to a favorite chair), how to operate mechanisms (such as latches and simple machines) and the meaning of words and symbolic concepts (sometimes by simply listening to people speak and watching their actions). > During play, dogs are capable of deliberately trying to deceive other dogs and people in order to get rewards, said Coren. "And they are nearly as successful in deceiving humans as humans are in deceiving dogs." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.h...
George83728 3y ago
Utilitarianism and consequentialism are very dangerous; they make it too easy for people to justify murder by doing a little moral arithmetic and (consciously or subconsciously) putting their finger on the scale by selectively considering or ignoring some outcomes. Peter Singer has demonstrated this himself, having seen fit to justify the murder of children for the greater good. This is why good moral philosophies have a deontological core of simple principles such as "Don't murder people."
- tizzy 3y ago
  Close but no cigar, that deontology begs the question _why_ should we not murder people. Utilitarianism gives a consistent, albeit simple, answer. Note that I probably agree with you, but the solution isn’t as simple as you think.
  - endominus 3y ago
    >Utilitarianism gives a consistent, albeit simple, answer. Except it doesn't. The "simple" cases of utilitarianism (i.e. happiness-maximizing or unhappiness-minimizing) are both supportive of killing people if their expected remaining lifetime happiness is negative or if their death would result in others being happier - see the infamous organ donor problem. Worse, by following that philosophy you eventually get to the Repugnant Conclusion[0], which is a world of as many minimally-happy humans as possible. The complex cases result in complex epicycles of propagating out utilitiarian ideals to the rest of society and eventually asserting that heuristics of the moral value of actions would actually be best in most cases because the effects of actions are impossible to quantitatively evaluate for anyone. Those heuristics essentially boil down to deontological principles. [0]: The fact that many public utilitarian philosophers are so unable to find a way out of this, yet so enamored with the idea of utilitarianism that they can't imagine it being wrong, that they signed a public statement saying that actually the Repugnant Conclusion is totally fine and people should still push for population ethics that lead to it is wild to me. See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/what-should-we-agree-on-about-the-repugnant-conclusion/EB52C686BAFEF490CE37043A0A3DD075 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/wha...
  - 3y ago
cinntaile 3y ago
It's a bit disappointing to read the comments here, the level is not very high. He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  There is a market for his ideas and he is selling to it.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[61]—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living".[62] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_in... So he's not just "I'm just asking question, bro.". He seems to accept many positions and not just using them as though experiments. Or, if he started things as 'just' thought experiments, he has now accepted those "inhuman answers" as valid.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    How do you even reach that conclusion based on that sentence? Your quote talks about equivalency, you interpret this as infanticide is ok. Those are two vastly different things?
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      Peter Singer's FAQ: > […] Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her or his parents. > Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, but only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support — which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection — but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely. * https://petersinger.info/faq https://petersinger.info/faq Do not most people nowadays consider a post-birth entity with the DNA of homo sapiens a person of particular sub-type "infant" (as classified by age)? Singer does not classify them as a person from what I've read.
monkeycantype 3y ago
I've enjoyed what I've read of Singer, I agree with a lot of what I read, but Utilitarianism misses something essential - we experience the world as an individual, all our eggs in this one irreplaceable basket. To feel safe, to be able to trust and cooperate, we need to feel that we have a unique spot in this great sea of people, that we uniquely matter to someone, that there are people who value and care about us specifically, that to someone we are irreplaceable. Any argument that weighs the cost of a life support machine for loved one, against a thousand vaccines for strangers is completely missing the point that it is billions of individual ties of love for specific individual people that knot this whole thing together. The commitments that we make to our loved ones, that we stick to beyond logic or hope, these are the hyphae of the great mycelium of our civilisation.
B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
I'll just leave this here: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Lot of talk about agents. Goes back to Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." If it is morally ok for Lions to kill their prey. Then it is also morally ok for humans to do human things, which includes killing each other and eating everything in sight. The only morality is enforced by humans on other humans. There is no universal morality. Humanity is just a group of monkeys that would prefer to live where killing within their group is not allowed and appoint other monkeys to police their area and put any killers or thieves in a monkey prison. Note, killing or stealing from other groups of monkeys is a-ok.

70 points by razcle 3y ago

I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human, as though humans are obviously morally inferior to any possible other species. That our failings are somehow objectively inexcusable. He chooses dolphins. The primary reproductive strategy of many dolphins is to gang up on a female, beat her into submission and gang rape her. They also routinely murder the infants of rivals. They’re vicious predators, with all the behaviours that come with that. Given the right context of communication it’s a likely a group of dolphins would side with us to exterminate another group to take their territory and females, as condemn us for anything. Oh but we can’t call it rape or murder because that’s projecting human values. He’s doing exactly the same thing. I’m not saying humans are beyond criticism or that his points against us are wrong. He makes a lot of actually very good points. I’ve discussed his ideas with my kids before. It’s just trying to portray humans as specially, egregiously worse than any conceivable comparison is kind of stupid frankly. It’s children’s fairytale morality.

imjonse 3y ago
> as though humans are obviously morally inferior to any possible other species maybe with great brains should come more responsibility/morality ?
- simonh 3y ago
  Yes, absolutely. We must strive to do much better. I said as much in my comment. That doesn’t make his naive projection of child like innocence and purity on anything non human credible.
  - imjonse 3y ago
    My takeaway from the article was that dolphins are presented as victims of humans, not necessarily as morally superior or having childlike innocence. Anyway, a lot of philosophizing and debating extreme corner cases is just an excuse to avoid the elephant in the room. No amount of lions hunting zebras or dolphins practicing gang rape can be an excuse for the horrible way intelligent animals are treated today by humans considering themselves civilized and humane. Just as concern for the nutritional requirements of poor children in third world countries is not a free pass for wealthy westerners to consume large amounts of animal products themselves without much regard to environmental impact and animal welfare.
benatkin 3y ago
> Given the right context of communication it’s a likely a group of dolphins would side with us to exterminate another group to take their territory and females, as condemn us for anything. Uh... Okay. The Industrial Revolution to me is just like a story I know called "The Puppy Who Lost His Way." The world was changing, and the puppy was getting... bigger. So, you see, the puppy was like industry. In that, they were both lost in the woods. And nobody, especially the little boy - "society" - knew where to find 'em. Except that the puppy was a dog. But the industry, my friends, that was a revolution.
- nxpnsv 3y ago
  Dolphins don’t read much, and aren’t likely to engage with a moral philosopher. So it should be no surprise that Singer reaches out to a more receptive human audience…
zvmaz 3y ago
> I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human Can you pinpoint where you got that impression? Note that it's not him that "chooses" dolphins, but it's the interviewer that asks him about what would it look like if we had an LLM that works with dolphins.
- simonh 3y ago
  Fair enough, but he’s said stuff like this before and nobody twisted his arm.
  - sprucevoid 3y ago
    > I’m disappointed he projects some sort of idealised aloof moral superiority on anything non human I see no evidence in the podcast transcript of Singer making such a claim. What exactly are you basing your assertion on? Quote the transcript please.
    - simonh 3y ago
      He thinks dolphins would ask “ Why have you failed? Why have you failed to stop humans treating animals so badly?” Dolphins are violent murderous rapey predators. What on Earth makes anyone think an intelligent dolphin would give a crap how humans treat animals in general? They’d be just as likely to try and make a deal with us to help us out with marine research, in exchange for helping them to genocide the males in another dolphin group so they can gang rape the females.
      - sprucevoid 3y ago
        You quote part of a sentence about dolphins from the beginning of the transcript. 1. The context is Cowen posing a quirky, ice-breaker kind of question that entertain some counter-factual assumptions to get a conversation rolling. Not unusual in these kinds of pod conversations. The quirky setup and the laugh is evidence that strict realism about real world dolphins is not assumed by Singer and Cowen there. For example Cowen says "We explain to the dolphin that you’re Peter Singer, right?", but from Singer's other work it is clear that he doesn't think science into any dolphin so far has found cognitive capacity necessary to understand the concept of a well known academic moral philosopher who has written the kind of arguments Peter Singer is well known for. The best interpretation is that what is happening at the start of the conversation is merely a loose way to imagine and talk about an outside view on the harm humans do to other animals. 2. Setting 1 aside you ascribed a view about not just Dolphins but "anything non human" to Singer. What's your basis for that? 3. As for the "moral superiority" ascription, Singer imagining a dolphin asking him "Why have you failed to stop humans treating animals so badly?" doesn't imply that Singer thinks dolphins (in general, or that imagined kind) have "moral superiority". For one, real humans have already asked that question so the imaginary dolphin is at most on par, not superior, in asking it. Secondly a moral thinker (real human or imaginary dolphin) may be able to point out some moral problems or ask moral questions while at the same time be unable to refrain from harmful behaviour and unable to understand other moral problems, including those where they're themselves part of the problem. So nothing Singer says there implies that he thinks dolphins (real or imagined) are morally superior in the sense of never causing any harm or understanding all moral problems better than humans or anything like that.
soandsosokrates 3y ago
The distinction between moral agent and moral subject is important here. "moral agent" is someone whose actions are actions are eligible for moral consideration. Non-human animals are usually considered "moral subjects" or *"moral patients". Moral agents must treat them well because they can suffer, but they don't have moral agency themselves. They can be purely amoral. Their acts can be horrible, but they don't have concepts of morally right or wrong. In the middle-ages pigs were were tried and sentenced to death for murdering humans, but today attributing moral responsibility to non-moral agents is usually considered wrong. Within humans, insanity or young age can limit moral agency. Little children are moral subjects.
- simonh 3y ago
  However Singer is proposing a thought experiment in which Dolphins exercise moral judgement. So he started it.
bjoli 3y ago
We don't even think all humans should be held responsible for their actions because they cannot understand the moral ramifications of their actions. How would we go about doing it in a sane way for animals?
throw0101b 3y ago
> [Dolphins] also routinely murder the infants of rivals. Infanticide was very common in ancient times pre-Christianity: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide and is still somewhat accepted in modern many cultures if the child is a girl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-ratio_imbalance_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-ratio_imbalance_in_China It also should be noted that Singer himself is not against it in many circumstances (though he doesn't view the entities involved as people, so it's not infanticide under his own definition): > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[61]—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living".[62] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_in... What many in the West think of as 'obvious' universal rights are in fact culturally contingent on Christianity.
- simonh 3y ago
  I’m not arguing that dolphins are objectively or even relatively good or bad. I’m saying that ascribing them with assumed superior moral judgement is silly, especially given what we actually know about them.
- oilchange 3y ago
  > Infanticide was very common in ancient times pre-Christianity: But christianity allows for infanticide. God himself did wipe out all the first born infant sons of egypt after all. > What many in the West think of as 'obvious' universal rights are in fact culturally contingent on Christianity. The racism, misogyny, slavery and genocide is also culturally contingent on Christianity as well. "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction[a] all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+15%3A2-3&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+15%3A2... The "beauty" of the bible is that it is hundreds of pages long and gives christians the justification for all the evil and good in the world. It isn't an accident that the greatest acts of genocide in human history have been carried out by christians. Entire continents genocided, entire races enslaved, entire cities nuked. All by christians. A religion, book, god, etc that orders you to murder children and infants cannot be a source of morality. If you think equality of sexes, races, etc are grounded in christianity then you do not know christianity. A religion that believes a woman was created from a man's rib and brought about his downfall is the basis of the universal rights?
jhanschoo 3y ago
Do you have criticism against his more confident claim that factory farming is wrong? To him it seems like ultimately sentient animals (capable of feeling pain and suffering) are moral patients. You can also see his perspective on dolphin gangbang in his discussion about reintroducing or controlling predator species (these seem to me to be morally similar situations); he is not very confident on such marginal cases.
- simonh 3y ago
  I think he has a lot of good points on many such issues. I said as much above.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> why he might side with aliens over humans, He's sitting on the fence about being a species traitor?

bakuninsbart 3y ago
Aliens I find hard to stomach as well, but I'm probably gonna be team AGI when we get there.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Everyone thinks that until the Boltzman Brain from 980 quintillion years in the future bootstraps itself back into our early universe, makes 10^894532367821002 copies of their soul, and decides to experiment on which eternal hells are the most agonizing.
valval 3y ago
The collective guilt and remorse of all of mankind is a heavy burden, but one he is willing and able in his nobility to bear.
- afarrell 3y ago
  This sounds far too similar to an unfortunate pattern I’ve sometimes practiced: taking on the pretense of responsibility instead of an actual responsibility. Bearing the collective guilt of all mankind is not a noble burden to bear because it is totally detached from taking actions that care for others. It seems more likely to motivate people to self-flagellate, stay in bed depressed by the fact that all of their actions will still result in a hugely negative outcome, or spend lots of time commenting on the internet. The results are as productive and caring as someone playing Call of Duty. Seems more effective to pick something very specific to strive for like the joy of knowing that some specific group of users from Senegal can provide for their families and to strive towards that.
- chasd00 3y ago
  > The collective guilt and remorse of all of mankind is a heavy burden, but one he is willing and able in his nobility to bear. that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever read and i hang out on fark.com sometimes.

airgapstopgap 3y ago

The most important of Singer's writings, in my opinion, is "Secrecy in Consequentialism"[0], mentioned in this podcast too, though not the crucial part, which I will present without further comment except that this paper should make any utterance from Singer or any of his followers (for example, SBF) inherently untrustworthy. > There are acts which are right only if no one – or virtually no one – will get to know about them. The rightness of an act, in other words, may depend on its secrecy. This can have implications for how often, and in what circumstances, such an act may be done. > Some people know better, or can learn better, than others what it is right to do in certain circumstances. > There are at least two different sets of instruction, or moral codes, suitable for the different categories of people. This raises the question whether there are also different standards by which we should judge what people do. > Though the consequentialist believes that acts are right only if they have consequences at least as good as anything else the agent could have done, the consequentialist may need to discourage others from embracing consequentialism. … > The idea that it is better if some moral views are not widely known was not invented by Sidgwick. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates proposes that ordinary people be brought up to believe that everyone is born ‘from the earth’ into one of three classes, gold, silver or bronze, and living justly consists in doing what is in their nature. Only the philosopher-rulers will know that this is really a myth, a ‘noble lie’. … > Esoteric morality is a necessary part of a consequentialist theory, and all of the points above can be defended. … > One of the most common objections to consequentialism is based on a hypothetical situation in which a surgeon has to do a delicate brain operation on a patient who happens to be the ideal organ donor for four other patients in the hospital, each of whom will die shortly unless they receive, respectively, a heart, a liver, and – for two of them – a kidney. The doctor is highly skilled, and is conﬁdent of her ability to carry out the brain surgery successfully. If she does, her patient will lead a more or less normal life. > But because the operation is a delicate one, no one could blame her, or have any reason to suspect anything, if the patient were to die on the operating table. Moreover, the hospital is experienced in organ transplantation, and the surgeon knows that if the patient were to die, the recipients of the patient’s organs would soon be able to go home and lead a more or less normal life. The surgeon knows no other details about her patient or the other patients, such as whether they are married, have children, or are about to discover a cure for cancer. In these circumstances, critics of consequentialism say, the consequentialist must think that the doctor ought to kill her patient, since in that way four lives will be saved, and only one lost, and this must be better than four dying and only one being saved. But, so the objection runs, it is obviously morally wrong for the surgeon to kill her patient, and any moral theory that says the contrary must be rejected. > We agree that the consequentialist must accept that, in these circumstances, the right thing for the surgeon to do would be to kill the one to save the four, but we do not agree that this means that consequentialism should be rejected. We think, on the contrary, that the appearance of unacceptability here comes from the fact that this is one of those rare cases in which the action is right only if perfect secrecy can be expected. Moreover, it is not an action that should be recommended to others. 0. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2009.00449.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9329....

avgcorrection 3y ago

A vegan+animal activist being a misanthrope is really the perfect bullseye when it comes to stereotypes.

archon1410 3y ago
It is difficult to not be a misanthrope once one realises the scale of evil that is being (banaly) perpetrated every single day. Not everyone can be a Gandhi or MLK Jr.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  I don't think it is a given that it is difficult not to be a misanthrope - not everyone views the world through the same lens.
triyambakam 3y ago
He's a hypocrite, he's not vegan. He has no discipline to live any of his so called principles.
- bjoli 3y ago
  Are you thinking of "the Paris exemption"? The reasoning goes like so: if it is easier for you to be a 99% vegan if you every couple of months allow yourself to eat a fancy egg and cheese omelet in a Paris restaurant. That kind of life is preferable to not being vegan. I think it is a realistic perspective instead of an idealistic one. The same goes for meatless Mondays. If you get one population to eat vegan food on Mondays, it is as if you turned one seventh of them full vegan. I have been vegan for 12 years, and telling people it is not about being 100% pure, but about striving towards 100%. That is probably that made me stay 99% vegan in bum-fuck-nowhere northern Sweden the first couple of years.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Yeah. I often find this line of reasoning mostly on the Right/Republican. If someone can't be 100% pure, like 100% vegan, or 100% recycle, then just give up. IF you eat one hamburger a year, then you are at total failure and hypocrite, so just go ahead and eat a rack of ribs every day. Like there is no concept of just trying to be better, moving the dial even a few % is still better than nothing.

hackandthink 3y ago

"Journal of Controversial Ideas" is a nice idea. After skimming the content: I guess most controversial ideas are to controversial to be published in this journal. (which is maybe a good thing)

tomcam 3y ago

In his book “Practical Ethics” he recommends infanticide up to 2 years old as a logical extension to abortion.

barry-cotter 3y ago
Yes. Do you have a point to add to that? Do you feel there’s some reason he’s obviously wrong for example?
- yossarian1408 3y ago
  Relevant context. Singer has a lot of clout because people read some of his stuff in a first year philosophy class. For those who didn't get the memo that the man is a crazy misanthrope, him taking the idea of infanticide seriously is a pretty good indicator of what his specific grift actually is.
  - burgh 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - spacechild1 3y ago
      > A 23 months old human is generally less intelligent than a dog Wow. Do you have any experience with little kids? With 23 months my daughter was drawing pictures, singing songs, laughing at my jokes, reenacting scenes from theater plays, etc.
      - barry-cotter 3y ago
        The question isn’t if 2 year olds are intelligent it’s if dogs are of comparable intelligence to a human 2 year old. They are. > As for language, the average dog can learn 165 words, including signals, and the "super dogs" (those in the top 20 percent of dog intelligence) can learn 250 words, Coren says. "The upper limit of dogs' ability to learn language is partly based on a study of a border collie named Rico who showed knowledge of 200 spoken words and demonstrated 'fast-track learning,' which scientists believed to be found only in humans and language learning apes," Coren said. > Dogs can also count up to four or five, said Coren. And they have a basic understanding of arithmetic and will notice errors in simple computations, such as 1+1=1 or 1+1=3. > Four studies he examined looked how dogs solve spatial problems by modeling human or other dogs' behavior using a barrier type problem. Through observation, Coren said, dogs can learn the location of valued items (treats), better routes in the environment (the fastest way to a favorite chair), how to operate mechanisms (such as latches and simple machines) and the meaning of words and symbolic concepts (sometimes by simply listening to people speak and watching their actions). > During play, dogs are capable of deliberately trying to deceive other dogs and people in order to get rewards, said Coren. "And they are nearly as successful in deceiving humans as humans are in deceiving dogs." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090810025241.h...

George83728 3y ago

Utilitarianism and consequentialism are very dangerous; they make it too easy for people to justify murder by doing a little moral arithmetic and (consciously or subconsciously) putting their finger on the scale by selectively considering or ignoring some outcomes. Peter Singer has demonstrated this himself, having seen fit to justify the murder of children for the greater good. This is why good moral philosophies have a deontological core of simple principles such as "Don't murder people."

tizzy 3y ago
Close but no cigar, that deontology begs the question _why_ should we not murder people. Utilitarianism gives a consistent, albeit simple, answer. Note that I probably agree with you, but the solution isn’t as simple as you think.
- endominus 3y ago
  >Utilitarianism gives a consistent, albeit simple, answer. Except it doesn't. The "simple" cases of utilitarianism (i.e. happiness-maximizing or unhappiness-minimizing) are both supportive of killing people if their expected remaining lifetime happiness is negative or if their death would result in others being happier - see the infamous organ donor problem. Worse, by following that philosophy you eventually get to the Repugnant Conclusion[0], which is a world of as many minimally-happy humans as possible. The complex cases result in complex epicycles of propagating out utilitiarian ideals to the rest of society and eventually asserting that heuristics of the moral value of actions would actually be best in most cases because the effects of actions are impossible to quantitatively evaluate for anyone. Those heuristics essentially boil down to deontological principles. [0]: The fact that many public utilitarian philosophers are so unable to find a way out of this, yet so enamored with the idea of utilitarianism that they can't imagine it being wrong, that they signed a public statement saying that actually the Repugnant Conclusion is totally fine and people should still push for population ethics that lead to it is wild to me. See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/what-should-we-agree-on-about-the-repugnant-conclusion/EB52C686BAFEF490CE37043A0A3DD075 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/utilitas/article/wha...
- 3y ago

cinntaile 3y ago

It's a bit disappointing to read the comments here, the level is not very high. He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks.

RandomLensman 3y ago
There is a market for his ideas and he is selling to it.
throw0101b 3y ago
> He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"[61]—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living".[62] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_infanticide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Euthanasia_and_in... So he's not just "I'm just asking question, bro.". He seems to accept many positions and not just using them as though experiments. Or, if he started things as 'just' thought experiments, he has now accepted those "inhuman answers" as valid.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  How do you even reach that conclusion based on that sentence? Your quote talks about equivalency, you interpret this as infanticide is ok. Those are two vastly different things?
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    Peter Singer's FAQ: > […] Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her or his parents. > Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, but only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support — which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection — but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely. * https://petersinger.info/faq https://petersinger.info/faq Do not most people nowadays consider a post-birth entity with the DNA of homo sapiens a person of particular sub-type "infant" (as classified by age)? Singer does not classify them as a person from what I've read.

monkeycantype 3y ago

I've enjoyed what I've read of Singer, I agree with a lot of what I read, but Utilitarianism misses something essential - we experience the world as an individual, all our eggs in this one irreplaceable basket. To feel safe, to be able to trust and cooperate, we need to feel that we have a unique spot in this great sea of people, that we uniquely matter to someone, that there are people who value and care about us specifically, that to someone we are irreplaceable. Any argument that weighs the cost of a life support machine for loved one, against a thousand vaccines for strangers is completely missing the point that it is billions of individual ties of love for specific individual people that knot this whole thing together. The commitments that we make to our loved ones, that we stick to beyond logic or hope, these are the hyphae of the great mycelium of our civilisation.

B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago

I'll just leave this here: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/494

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Lot of talk about agents. Goes back to Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." If it is morally ok for Lions to kill their prey. Then it is also morally ok for humans to do human things, which includes killing each other and eating everything in sight. The only morality is enforced by humans on other humans. There is no universal morality. Humanity is just a group of monkeys that would prefer to live where killing within their group is not allowed and appoint other monkeys to police their area and put any killers or thieves in a monkey prison. Note, killing or stealing from other groups of monkeys is a-ok.