BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Peter Singer

  
 
Atyeo
07:42 / 30.06.04
I saw an interesting documentary on BBC2 about the controversial philosopher Peter Singer last night.

He used a nice analogy of a train approaching a junction. If on one track there was an infant and the other sat your brand new car, which would you save. Of course, everybody would say the child and yet people don't make this decision everyday, choosing material goods over the lives of billions of people.

It struck me that while I place most of my faith in reason and logic questions arise that are incredibly difficult to answer.

For example, does quality (and right?) of life differ from individual to individual? And if so, doesn't that mean that using pure reason you could arive at such bizzare ethical stances as using disabled people as slaves. For as long as the overall quality of life is increased then it is for the good.

I suppose I'm considering - can reason and hard, cold logic be completely trusted?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:54 / 30.06.04
I just want to make it clear that Singer's ethics don't change from person to person, even in the case of his own mother contracting alzheimers. He is admirably consistent and has created a theory in which hard logic is coupled with compassion because his particular brand of utilitarianism is based on levels of pain and awareness.
 
 
Smoothly
17:41 / 30.06.04
As I understand them, Singers ethics - his principles - don't change from person to person, but for him the 'right' to life does. So I think Atyeo's question is a good one. Although I suppose the real question is what process should you employ to make ethical judgments if *not* logic? I don't think Singer's philosophy is likely to lead you to conclude that it's morally justifiable to use (I assume mentally)disabled people as slaves, as a uilitarian(ist) would have a tough time arguing that the happiness derived from having a slave out-weighed the misery of being one, even if that misery were diminished. A person sufficiently disabled of consciousness would, I'd suggest, make a pretty rubbish slave.
I certainly think a logical, utilitarian philosophy can lead you to draw conclusion that people might find unintuitive, but does that make them bizarre?
 
 
Atyeo
07:27 / 01.07.04
I take your point Suavemente but I'm sure you could derive a lot of unintuitive solutions.

He seemed to suggest that premature babies who will PROBABLY be disabled and whos parents don't want that burden should be killed.

I see the logic but I think that your are on very dangerous ground when you start making such statements.

Who can say what quality of life another person has? If you take it to extremes then someone who is clinically depressed has less of a right to life than a perpetually happy individual as they have a better "quality of life".

Would that mean that happier people should be moved up the waiting lists?

Who would make these decisions?
 
 
Smoothly
10:56 / 01.07.04
Yeah, I agree, you could derive a lot of unintuitive solutions. But what's wrong with that? Historically, raw intuition has been a pretty poor guide to a proper understanding of this big flat stationary plain we call the World.

I don't think Singer has ever said that unwanted babies who are likely to be disabled should be killed, but I might be wrong and I'd be interested to see the reference if he did. But he's certainly argued against the position that all human life if equally valuable purely because it is human and alive. Is that counter-intuitive?
I also think it can be misleading to characterise the goal as simple 'happiness'. Maybe 'Quality' is better. And as you say, it's difficult to judge the *quality* of someone's life on the basis of their outward cheeriness. The fact that someone is clinically depressed does not mean that ze doesn't value hir life, that hir life is of negligible quality or that hir life does not contribute to the quality of others'. But if I were to argue that yes, medical treatment should be given first to those who will benefit from it most, where it would have the greatest impact on Quality Of Life bottom-line, what would you say? Do you have a problem with the approach, or are you just daunted by the calculation and/or distrustful of those who might be charged with making it?
 
 
Atyeo
13:52 / 01.07.04
I suppose I do agree with it it just seems to me that philosophically it is hard to disagree with it but in reality those kinds of decisions just couldn't be made.

Surely QoL is incalcuable, no?

Ah, I've just thought of another counter-intuitive solution. Should the mentally disabled be made to sacrifice their lives by having vital organs removed to help 'normal' people.

In this situation, if you look at the individuals, the mentally disabled person is losing their life but a non-mentally disabled person is gaining a life. Does this not fit in with Singers Utilitarian stance. Overall, taking both individuals into account, there is an increase in QoL. (I am assuming that transplants would be 100% successful).

Maybe this is a good thing.

Maybe I am being a philosophical wimp.
 
 
Smoothly
14:44 / 01.07.04
I think perhaps your use of 'mentally disabled' might be the cause of some of the conflict with your intuition. People with a range of mental disabilities can enjoy the same quality of life as anyone else, and it's hard to imagine a situation where there wouldn't be a more utilitarian way of saving someone's life than sacrificing a dimmer individual for parts. Unless you're thinking (as I'm guessing Singer is) of people who are entirely disabled, mentally - people in a permanently vegetative state. In this case intuition might well support a belief that it would be immoral *not* to use their organs to save other lives. And I gather that harvesting organs in this way happens routinely.

On the calculating utility front, naturally it's going to be complex and involved. But no one said what's right and wrong is easily determined.

You know, I dimly recall an intersting method of determining the balance of conflicting interests in simple utilitarian calculations by means of a betting procedure, or somesuch. I *think* it employed the same kind of disincentive to be dishonest in assessing one's own interests as the 'You split, I choose' convention in dividing swag. Ring and bells to anyone?
 
 
Atyeo
15:09 / 01.07.04
There is something known as felicific calculus which calculates 'happiness' based on 7 principles.

Intensity
Duration
Certainty or uncertainty
Propinquity or remoteness
Fecundity
Purity
Extent

It was devised by Jeremy Bentham.

But it seems like a theory that every individual would disagree on at some level. Which area is more important than another? Should other 'variables' be included. It seems to me to be an interesting philosophical theory that could influence decision making (I believe that qol is taken into account in all health care systems) but couldn't become a workable in practice.

As to the harvesting of organs... I didn't think people who were clinincally alive could be forced to donate their organs even if they were completely disabled. Obviously, the individual wouldn't have a choice (being heavily disabled) but could their parents kill them for their organs?
 
 
Smoothly
15:32 / 01.07.04
No, Bentham's analysis wasn't what I was thinking about. I had a nifty little game in mind. But maybe I dreamt it.

could their parents kill them for their organs?

As I understand it, once the requisite quorum of medical professionals agrees, with the agreement of next of kin (and in some instances, no doubt without)patients with minimal brain activity can be taken off life-support and their organs donated. But for the purposes of this discussion, it matters less what's legal than what's right.

I'm interested. I imagined that a broadly utilitarian approach to ethics was fairly standard these days. How does your intuition tell you you should make these judgements, Atyeo.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
16:37 / 01.07.04
Surely QoL is incalcuable, no?

Remember that when Singer talks about quality of life he's still speaking as a utilitarian. The quality of life of a disabled person is important but don't forget that everyone is equal and so the people who deal with that disability are also extremely important. Best consequence for the biggest number of people. So even if you kill a disabled baby to save a perfectly healthy baby you might not be acting in the best way as a utilitarian.
 
 
sdv (non-human)
14:10 / 04.07.04
Rough notes...

The importance of Singer's work is in his attempt to construct rational and humane criteria for establishing the value of a human life in the situation where it is difficult or even impossible to identify anything positive, where expierences are dominated by agony and pain. Singer has constructed an alternative to the anti-secular ethics founded on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic (aka Christian-Semitic) ethical systems, within which human life is considered sacred but less than faith.

Two critiques that Singer has not answered as far as I can tell: Firstly that Singer's philosophy remains a humanism in that he still places a human life as having greator value than an animals life where the human life is able to be considered to have a value. This is incoherent as there is no valid reason why the rationale should not be extended to state that a human life has no greator value than any other animal's life.

Secondly Singer states that you can look into the eyes of a great ape then you can see that the ape suffers. Consequently Singer is defining his ethics against the notion of victimhood - that is to say an ethic is defined against suffering. An ethical subject then is not constructed against reason, dignity or truth but the ability to suffer, so on this basis his ethics should not place a precedence of the human over other animals. Singer's ethics does but obviously should not. The minor failure of Singer's position then is that he cannot construct an ethics that addresses the non-human, the non-animal. What might ethical behavior towards the planet consist of ?

Singer's humanism is also telling for it is constructed on the model of human rights, which is to say that we should treat all non-human's and for that matter marginal human social groups as being victims. This contains the strong implication that only direct experience enables an authentic voice to recognised - for example only a Islamic Woman can know what it means to be an Islamic Woman and explain her suffering. This is a reactionary position in that it accepts that an authentic understanding of anothers position is impossible, for it is founded on the idea that only direct experence can tell the story of their suffering, such a way of founding an ethical position is always going to end up being a reactionary position.

I am not incidentally arguing that Singer is in any sense reactionary - quite the opposite I sometimes think he tries to maintain the appearence of being a mere liberal. Usually it seems that his readers are unable to leave their reactionary humanism behind them. They really want the 'tree of life' with humans at the pinnacle to be true.
 
  
Add Your Reply