from http://www.animalliberationfront.com...r--summary.htm


Philosophy Under Fi
The Peter Singer Controversy

Peter Singer is arguably the most influential philosopher in the world
today. His more than two dozen books include two international
best-sellers, Animal Liberation (1975) and Practical Ethics (1979),
which have been translated into 15 languages and taught in courses
throughout the world. His work played a vital role in shaping the
contemporary animal rights movement, and has influenced hundreds of
thousands to become vegetarians. He is a leading scholar in the field
of bioethics and the world's foremost proponent of utilitarianism.
Aside from Jack Kervorkian (to whom Singer often is unflatteringly
likened), no one has done more to challenge our long-standing Western
views of life and death.

It is no accident that Singer also is one of today's most
controversial thinkers. He has been shouted down in Germany,
Switzerland, and Austria, and is the subject of intense debate and
protest in the United States due to his recent appointment to a
prestigious chair in bioethics at Princeton University's Center for
Human Values. Not since 1940, when New York University tried to hire
the atheist and sexual libertine Bertrand Russell, has the world
witnessed such furor over the employment of a philosopher. Why all the
fuss over a man so soft-spoken you have to lean in to hear? Singer
first established himself as a bold thinker with his argument that
animals share equal moral status with human beings (and that it
therefore is unethical for people to kill and eat them). While many
decried his animal liberation perspective, no one ever denounced him
as a Nazi or led protest movements against him. Not, at least, until
the summer of 1999, when his defense of euthanasia and infanticide for
"severely disabled" human beings became widely publicized just as fall
classes at Princeton were beginning.

President Harold Shapiro defended the choice to appoint Singer, but a
wide gamut of organizations denounced Singer as a "Nazi," a proponent
of "hate speech," and a "Dr. Mengele." As Not Dead Yet's president
Diane Colman, sees it, "Peter Singer is attempting to establish a
philosophical foundation for denying disabled people with the equal
protection of the law and killing us for his version of the greater
good." Not mincing words, one disabled rights activist branded Singer
simply as "the most dangerous man in the world today."

While protestors claim that in hiring Singer, Princeton has violated
its own "Commitment to the Community" policy, which demands respect
for difference, diversity, and the disabled, Singer insists he is
grossly misread, vehemently rejects any analogies between his views
and those of the Nazis, and declares that his overriding moral concern
has been to reduce needless suffering in the world.

So who is Peter Singer -- a moral monster or a man of compassion?
Should his views be embraced as "controversial" and instructive for
provoking dialogue on critical issues, or branded as a form of "hate
speech" that no community should tolerate? Who is the greater threat
to society -- Singer, or those who wish to silence him? Does it make
sense to appoint an advocate of animal rights, euthanasia, and
infanticide to a chair in a center for "Human Values"? And how is it
that Singer defends the moral equivalence of animals and human beings
-- thus opposing the killing of animals in almost all cases -- and yet
banishes the disabled from the realm of "personhood"?

The key to understanding Singer is found in the utilitarian
sensibility and assumptions that form the backbone of his work.
Formulated first by 18th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham,
utilitarianism holds that the morally best action is that which brings
about the greatest amount of pleasure or happiness to the greatest
amount of people. This view says that the most important feature of an
action is the consequences it brings about, rather than the intention
or motivation behind it. Utilitarianism is defined against its major
philosophical competitor, known as "deontology," a duty- oriented
theory developed by the 18th eighteenth-century philosophy Immanuel
Kant. For Kant, the consequences of an action are irrelevant (one can
do the right thing for the wrong reasons); what matters solely is the
intention of the agent and whether that agent is acting in accordance
with reason and moral obligation.

Singer falls squarely on the utilitarian side of this philosophical
divide. For him ethics should be rooted in the quality of life, rather
than in hypothetical suppositions about is "sanctity" -- on real
issues of pain and pleasure, rather than abstract principles of duty
and obedience.

In Animal Liberation, Singer follows Bentham's view that, when
thinking about the moral status of animals, "The question is not Can
they reason? nor Can they speak?' but, `Can they suffer?" Cutting
through the tangled web of human prejudices against animals, and the
Western idea that reason forms the human essence, Singer argues that
the ability of animals to feel pain and pleasure puts them on a plane
of moral equivalence with us. Whether or not animals can author
treatises on mathematics, they, like us, feel pain, and we therefore
have an obligation not to cause them needless suffering. Uncovering
irrational prejudices akin to sexism and racism, Singer denounces all
forms of what he calls "speciesism," whereby human beings believe they
can exploit animals merely because they do not belong to the species
homo sapiens.

Singer's critics often fail to note the nuances of his position: in
rare cases of substantive necessity in which human beings might have
to harm or kill animals (as in some forms of animal experimentation),
he grants a moral premium to human beings on the grounds that we are a
more complex life form.

Singer's qualifications here foreshadowed his later attempt to
distinguish between two different classes of life, not humans and
nonhumans, but persons and nonpersons. Defining personhood as the
possession of traits like the capacity to feel and reason,
self-awareness and autonomy, and the ability to imagine a future,
Singer finds cases of humans who are not, by this definition, persons
(e.g., the comatose) and nonhumans who are persons (e.g., great apes
and possibly all mammals). While all "persons" have (roughly) equal
moral status (whether they are animals or humans), Singer values
persons over nonpersons. It is this distinction that Singer's critics
find so objectionable, not so much because he brings animals into the
realm of personhood, but because he reads some humans out of it.

Against the standard Western belief that (human) life is "sacred" -- a
deontological notion that each person has an innate value it is the
inviolable duty of all others to respect -- Singer's utilitarian
position focuses on the quality of a life based on the capacity to
experience pleasure, happiness, and self- fulfillment. Life, in other
words, is not inherently worthwhile, and some lives are better not
being lived at all.

Suppose, for example, that parents knew in advance of a baby's birth
that it would be born without arms and legs. In such cases, Singer
supports the parents' right to terminate this life. His view becomes
more controversial, however, when he argues that the same principle
applies up to 28 days after birth. In the case of lives that would be
irredeemably difficult and painful, Singer endorses not simply
euthanasia of the unborn, but infanticide. What, asks Singer, is the
difference between a seriously impaired fetus and a newborn? The mere
fact that the latter is alive outside of the womb is trivial for him,
since in either case this being has a painful life ahead of it that is
not worth living.

Amid the overheated attacks on Singer, it is important to highlight
what he is not saying: he does not advocate that the State begin to
abort or kill any and all disabled fetuses or newborns; rather,
parents, together with their physicians, should have the right to
decide whether the infant's life will be so miserable that it would be
inhumane to prolong it. Singer clearly is not offering carte blanch on
killing babies: He would establish very strict conditions on
permissible instances of infanticide, but these conditions might owe
more to the effects of infanticide on others than to any intrinsic
wrongness of killing an infant.

Nor, to be sure, is he bashing disabled people; rather, he wants them
to have the choice to die with dignity if their suffering warrants it.
He believes that "any disabled person should be supported in trying to
live the best possible life that he or she can, as long as he or she
wants to. It's certainly nothing against people with disabilities that
motivates my position. It's rather a desire to avoid suffering."

But there is another case in which Singer supports infanticide that
raises the blood pressure of his critics, one where he brings an
impaired newborn into a cold calculation of pain and pleasure and
concludes one life-form is exchangeable for another. "When the death
of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with
better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will
be greater if the disabled infant is killed ... killing a disabled
infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is
not wrong at all."

If Singer is trying to overturn outmoded beliefs in the unconditional
sanctity of life, his critics argue that he errs on the opposite
extreme, in seeing life as disposable when a greater utility
(according to his calculations) will result. For Singer's critics,
there are two disturbing assumptions he the fact that for Singer a
life can be sacrificed in an effort to bring about a greater good, and
that he considers hemophilia, chronic urinary tract infections, and
other conditions sufficiently debilitating so as to disqualify their
victims from "personhood." Critics might wonder whether teenagers who
dispose of their babies in garbage cans have read Practical Ethics,
and whether Singer condones their actions. Singer denies that he
would. Only in those cases in which it is reasonable to conclude that
a child would lead a life devoid of pleasure does he support the right
of the parents to terminate that child's life.

Singer's critics seize on what they find to be a suspect and dangerous
opposition between person and nonperson to assign each individual to a
hierarchy of value. But can we classify people in such a simplistic
way? Who is Singer to decide what constitutes "normal" and what makes
him think his criteria are foundational and universally valid? Who
among us really fit Singer's ideal Ubermensch"? Aren't we all always a
bit short of being healthy, rational, self-aware, and
future-envisioning?

Is Singer oblivious to the socially constructed and variable nature of
categories like "person," "nonperson," "intelligence," and "health"?
And to the possibility that parents might come to kill children for
increasingly frivolous reasons, influenced by prevailing, ultimately
arbitrary social prejudices? In a society organized around
consumerism, advertising, mass-mediated identities, and, now, genetic
engineering, we are moving all-too rapidly toward a Gattaca-Like world
that demotes, demeans, and destroys all groups perceived as inferior.
Distinctions such as those Singer draws between "persons" and
"nonpersons" are of potential use as a moral compass, but they come
with their own dangers.

What alarms Singer's detractors the most is their sense that he is on
a dangerously slippery slope, whereby today someone with Alzheimers
disease fails to be a "person" and tomorrow someone with a bad memory;
today someone in a wheelchair, tomorrow someone with a limp; today
kill out of utility, tomorrow out of convenience. Singer believes,
however, that we are already on a slippery slope: the moment we allow
the termination of a pregnancy or the euthanasia of people with brain
damage, we have already stepped from an unambiguous ideal of the
sanctity of life down the slope of complexity, uncertainly, and flux.

The concerns of disabled rights activists are eminently
understandable, for Singer is shuffling them into, or at least toward,
a nonperson category. While it is crude and inaccurate to smear Singer
as a Nazi, critics have pointed out that there are alarming parallels
between his views and those of the Third Reich, where mentally and
physically disabled people were special targets. Despite Singer's
protest at these analogies, and his reminders to his audience that
three of his grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps, his
positions and language often sound like those of a eugenicist.

It is paradoxical that the utilitarian theory, ostensibly liberatory
when applied to the domain of animals, has such problematic
implications when applied to human beings. Disabled rights activist
Sarah Triano says she is "absolutely confounded by the fact that
Singer can so brilliantly make an argument for a social model of
animal rights, but cannot seem to apply the same logic to disability.
Is it impossible for him to imagine that certain humans might actually
be subjected to the same kinds of oppression as animals?" If in
describing the suffering of animals Singer calls for their liberation,
not their euthanasia, why then, Triano wonders, does he advocate
killing infants sure to experience suffering in their lives rather
than advocate social changes that might minimize their pain?

It seems to many that Singer, having overturned the prejudice of
speciesism, Singer creates a new one in its place -- call it (in an
equally awkward neologism) "disablism." Disabled rights activists feel
that the chauvinism Singer rejects in the case of animals resurfaces
in the human realm where he devalues "nonpersons." Many are puzzled by
the apparent contradiction of a warm-hearted person who gives one-
fifth of his income away to famine-relief groups, and a cold
calculator who gives a thumbs down to "nonpersons."

A recent article in The New Yorker shrewdly identified a key
contradiction in Singer's approach to ethics. Confronting him with the
fact that his own mother was dying of Alzheimer's disease, which
rendered her, in Singer's scheme, a "nonperson," but that he had not
euthanized her, Singer responded by saying it was "different" in the
case of someone he knew and loved, and that he choose to care for her
as long as possible, spending copious amounts on health care, albeit
on someone doomed to die, rather than giving the money to aid those
who could live. "I think this has made me see how the issues of
someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult."
Betraying the abstract viewpoint that is an occupational hazard of the
academic, Singer had no problem of prescribing euthanasia to imaginary
others, but found it impossible to do in his own case with someone
all-too concrete.

The Peter Singer controversy unfolds. Apparently ensconced at
Princeton, it will be interesting to watch how he exerts his newly
found prominence and infamy here in the United States, and whether or
not constructive debates stem from his work and presence. For better
or worse, Singer is now one of America's few public intellectuals. May
his work help change the moral barriers in the way of ameliorating the
suffering of human beings and animals.

He also believes parents should have the right to kill their own children
during the first year of their life if they don't feel they will live a
quality existence.

Not to mention..he feels people should be able to have sex with animals if
they feel love for the animal. Animals and humans are equal in his eyes,
y'know.

The man may be an intellectual, but hes also an idiot. The fact that
Princeton would hire him is a sad commentary on the state of our
universities in this country.

--
Fosco Gamgee Whitfurrows
and his 6" boner
Whoops.

On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:09:13 -0800, "F.G. Whitfurrows"
> wrote:

<snip>

You are genetically incapable of not responding to obvious flame-bait,
aren't you?

At least now I've got you plonked on my home machine, too.

--
Kevin S. Wilson
Tech Writer at a University Somewhere in Idaho
"Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?"

On 15 Feb 2004 00:28:57 GMT, wrote:

>Kevin S. Wilson > wrote:
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:09:13 -0800, "F.G. Whitfurrows"
>> > wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> You are genetically incapable of not responding to obvious flame-bait,
>> aren't you?
>>
>> At least now I've got you plonked on my home machine, too.
>
>Guess I'm next, if not already. <sigh>

Why would I plonk you? The only people in my killfile for AFB are
self-proclaimed racists and one bozo who apparently can't resist
following up to obvious flame bait.

--
Kevin S. Wilson
Tech Writer at a University Somewhere in Idaho
"Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?"

"Kevin S. Wilson" > wrote The only people in my killfile
for AFB are
> self-proclaimed racists and one bozo who apparently can't resist
> following up to obvious flame bait.
>

Of course I'm not the one involved in all the mile long threads started by
the troll. I guess its not ok to reply directly to the troll but as long as
someone else replies first then its ok, right?

--
Fosco Gamgee Whitfurrows
and his 6" boner

> wrote >

> I must share with you my observation that the 'bozo' to whom you refer,
> like you, has made many valuable posts to the NG, as has the
> 'self-proclaimed racist'.
>

Aw, gee. Nick...you're cool.

--
Fosco Gamgee Whitfurrows
and his 6" boner

On 15 Feb 2004 01:42:42 GMT, wrote:

>I must share with you my observation that the 'bozo' to whom you refer,
>like you, has made many valuable posts to the NG,

Agreed. And for that, I cut him as much slack as I could, for as long
as I could. But there's a point at which I say "Enough." Full-quoting
150+ lines of obvious flame-bait for a one-line follow-up was that
point.

> as has the 'self-proclaimed racist'.

His contributions to this group don't factor into my estimation of
him. Only one thing does: His racist post and his refusual to
apologize.

David Duke has probably done a good deed or two in his life, as well.
Doesn't mean he has my respect, nor does it mean that I'm particularly
interested in what he has to say on any subject, including BBQ.

In other words, you got your killfile criteria, and I got mine.

--
Kevin S. Wilson
Tech Writer at a University Somewhere in Idaho
"Who put these fingerprints on my imagination?"

In article >,
wrote:

> Obligatai No Q tonight.

Here, I note the resisting of the temptation to break the thread and
reklabel the post.

>Thai soup with shrimp, chicken livers and Thai
> 'gnocchi' was purty good, though.

"Thai gnocchi"?!?
I'll bite. Tell me more

monroe(gnocchi gnocchi - whoosi therey)

"Kevin S. Wilson" > wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 16:09:13 -0800, "F.G. Whitfurrows"
> > wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> At least now I've got you plonked on my home machine, too.
>

Wow, and you never even called me Chuckles. I'm hurt.

--
Fosco Gamgee Whitfurrows
and his 6" boner

F.G. Whitfurrows wrote:
> Wow, and you never even called me Chuckles. I'm hurt.

If it helps any I could call you "Gigli" ?

Dale

--

This is ridiculous. Why can't people just refrain from repsonding?
It's not the troll that's the PITA here, it's the people who repsond.

-sw