Abstract
‘Broadly influential’ is not a phrase that springs to mind when one is confronted with analytic philosophy. It is, however, one of the phrases that must be used to describe Peter Singer and the previous two editions of Practical Ethics. Used widely in ethics classrooms around the world, it has been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, Bengali, Serbian and eleven other languages. These and other books of Singer’s have made him the de facto intellectual force behind the animal rights movement in the West, and have prompted publications such as The New Yorker to describe him as the world’s most influential living philosopher. Singer has demonstrated that serious philosophy need not be limited to academic conferences and presses, but rather that concepts like ‘replacement theory’ and ‘two-level preference utilitarianism’ may be understood by non-specialists as having significant practical bite in the world outside the academy.
The attention his work has received, of course, has come in part because of what appear to be outrageous claims about infanticide, the mentally disabled, and the moral status of certain non-human animals in relationship to certain human animals. And the third edition does not back away from these claims. Singer is willing to entertain, for instance, the idea that the legal right to life for human persons ‘comes into force, not at birth, but only a short time after birth—perhaps a month’ (p. 153). And he makes the claim that no infant ‘has as strong an intrinsic claim to life as beings capable of seeing themselves as distinct entities existing over time’ (p. 161). Indeed, he argues that certain non-human animals, like chimpanzees and dolphins, have greater moral value than immature or damaged human beings who lack rationality and self-awareness.
At least for those are familiar with Singer’s work, these claims are old chestnuts. There are, however, plenty of reasons to get the new edition of Practical Ethics. In addition to updating his views in light of new arguments and data that have arisen since 1993, this edition has added a new and separate chapter on climate change to the already existing chapter on environmental concerns. But the most compelling shift that takes place in the new edition comes (somewhat ironically, given its title) not from his views on applied issues, but rather with regard to his ethical theory. For nearly his entire career as a philosopher, the 65-year-old Singer believed that the ethical life could be described as acting in such a way as to bring about preference-maximization of all beings over time. In the preface to the new edition, however, Singer drops this bombshell: ‘The astute reader who compares this edition with the previous one may notice that I am now more ready to entertain—although not yet embrace—the idea that there are objective ethical truths that are independent of what anyone desires’ (p. xiii). Singer has been convinced by Derek Parfit’s new book On What Matters that David Hume’s view of practical reason is incorrect, and he now believes that certain preferences are objectively irrational and should not factor into an utilitarian preference calculation.
Indeed, unlike many philosophers who focus on practical ethics (and not a few who focus on theory), Singer is candid about the problems his theory faces on other fronts as well. For instance, he is convinced that a world with persons (that is, those who can do things like make great works of art, enter deep and loving relationships, etc.) is better than one without persons, but he admits his preference utilitarianism struggles to give reasons why. He also maintains that it would be a great loss if future generations preferred video games to the exclusion of enjoying nature, but it is difficult to make the case if the only tool at one’s disposal is weighing the number and intensity of various preferences. I would add that this tool also provides no way to acceptably order preferences into a hierarchy where, when held with equal intensity, one should obviously trump another—say, when a Jewish person’s preference to live should trump the Nazi’s preference for the common good of the Third Reich. It also fails to provide an adequate way to figure out our duties to distant future people when, given how many crazy things people have preferred in the past (and prefer now!), we have no idea what such people will prefer.
One answer to these problems, of course, is to accept a more objective understanding of ethics. This is something that Singer is prepared to consider, but he hesitates both because of a worry that an objective understanding of the good requires a grounding that is just too close to theistic metaphysics, and because it isn’t clear how multiple goods are to be resolved when ethical disagreement takes place. For now, Singer is using a kind of intuitionism to justify the claim that some preferences are irrational, but if he wants to resolve the tensions mentioned above I believe he will have to embrace a thicker and more prominent place for objectivity as he develops his new moral theory.
Perhaps one fruitful conversation partner he could have along the way would be that of Christian moral theology—a tradition which has thought long and hard about the objective flourishing of the human person (and creation more broadly) and objective moral norms which may result from that understanding. In the final chapter of the third edition, Singer leaves a rather large opening for this conversation when he ultimately appeals to happiness as the primary reason to act morally in the first place. This is not the happiness of a psychological state (which, he says, psychopaths may have), but rather a kind of happiness which comes from living an other-centered, coherent life of meaning. Bring on the Aristotelian Thomists!
Many Christians will balk at the prospects for this conversation. Indeed, some have defined their understandings of the ethical precisely against the thought of those like Singer who, they believe, represent something like a ‘culture of death’. But any Christian doing something like a fair reading of Practical Ethics will note the striking overlap between Singer’s ethic and that of the broad Christian tradition. This is most obvious when it comes to articulating our duties to the poor—for here Singer’s arguments actually push Christians to more faithfully live out the implications of their own principles. And those of us who are convinced of non-violence and the biblical view that non-human animals were created to be our kin and companions, rather than mere food machines, will also resonate with Singer’s arguments against the barbaric practice of intensive factory farming.
But what of issues like abortion and euthanasia? Singer supports not only abortion, but infanticide; he supports not only voluntary euthanasia, but also killing mentally damaged human beings who cannot meaningfully consent to their own destruction. It may look as if conversation is not possible on these issues, but even here we can see that the overlap is substantial and the disagreements narrow and interesting. Singer considers nearly all of the major abortion arguments, and on all but one (including whether or not the fetus is a human being) he sides with pro-life Christians. His lone disagreement is about whether or not we should think about a human fetus (in addition to infants and the mentally damaged, for that matter) as a metaphysical substance that is the ‘kind of thing’ we should treat as a person. On end of life issues, Singer rejects the received secular wisdom that brain-death is an acceptable criterion for determining when a human being has died. Furthermore, and along with Roman Catholicism, he also rejects the distinction between aiming at death activity (say, by a lethal injection) and aiming at it passively by removing life-sustaining treatment.
But because each approach has (largely) defined itself by opposition to the other, Singerites and Christians have exaggerated our differences and failed to see common ground. But if we engage each other in the spirit of intellectual solidarity, this trend will quickly reverse itself. Indeed, I predict that in the not too distant future we can and will make common cause in facing a common enemy: the consumerism and hyper-autonomy of contemporary western liberalism.