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Why Peter Singer is Wrong

Singer on rights. "I am not convinced that the notion of a moral right is a helpful or meaningful one..." (Practical Ethics, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 1993: 96)"The language of rights is a convenient political shorthand. It is even more valuable in the era of thirty-second TV news clips..." (Animal Liberation, 2nd ed., Random House, 1990: 8) .

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Why Peter Singer is Wrong

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    1. Why Peter Singer is Wrong David S. Oderberg Princeton, 6 December 2006

    3. Which creatures have ‘special value’? ‘Persons’: ‘rational and self-conscious beings’ (PE: 87) Of those, the most valuable are those whose ‘lives are worth living’ (PE: ch.7) “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all” (PE: 191. In the first edition (1979: 138) he says “defective” instead of “disabled”)

    4. Infants and ‘persons’ “[L]ife only begins in the morally significant sense when there is awareness of one’s existence...” (PE: 189-90) But a ‘person’ is also ‘rational and self-aware’: their lives should be taken the most seriously in the utilitarian calculus (PE: 182) “[I]nfants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings” (PE: 182; emphasis added)

    5. Infants? “[N]o infant - disabled or not - has as strong a claim to life” as a ‘person’ (PE: 182) How about killing haemophiliac babies? Yes, if no one objects and it “has no adverse effects on others” (PE: 186) It would be a duty if the parents could then go ahead and produce a disease-free baby (ibid.)

    6. Replaceability Non-‘persons’ are “replaceable”, just like barnyard animals (PE: 132-3, 185-8) “Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind [for the future], because snails and newborn infants are incapable of having such desires” (PE: 90)

    7. Killing babies If “the family as a whole” decides that it is in their own interests to kill their child, that child should die (‘A German Attack on Applied Ethics’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 9 (1992): 86 “Parents may,” he says, “with good reason, regret that a disabled [first edition - “defective”] child was ever born. In that event the effect that the death of the child will have on its parents can be a reason for, rather than against killing it” (PE: 183)

    8. Killing babies The question: is this non-‘person’ a “burden” on society? (Singer and Kuhse, Should the Baby Live?, Oxford UP, 1985): 161-71 “There is a limit to the burden of dependence which any community can carry” (ibid: 170) It “does not seem wise to add to the burden on limited resources by increasing the number of severely disabled children who will, if they are to lead a worthwhile life, need a disproportionately large share of these resources” (ibid: 171)

    9. Killing adults - or other people’s mothers Euthanasia for any ‘person’ with a life “not worth living” Includes “senile elderly patients” (PE: 192) “probably not the best use you could make of my money. That is true. But it does provide employment for a number of people who find something worthwhile in what they are doing” (Michael Specter, ‘The Dangerous Philosopher’, The New Yorker, 6 Sept. 1999: 55)

    10. Killing adults – or other people’s mothers “[T]his otherwise common act of filial piety…flagrantly violates the son’s own moral theory. … Singer’s own actions seem to proclaim that what is right and what is rigorous applies only to other people’s mothers” (Peter Berkowitz, ‘Other People’s Mothers: The Utilitarian Horrors of Peter Singer’, 10 Jan. 2000: 36)

    11. Killing adults – or other people’s mothers “Singer tacks between the scholar’s insistence on reliable empirical evidence and his own scholarly indifference to empirical evidence” (Berkowitz: 35) “Some of my early stuff was perhaps insensitive to people with disabilities…I would like to be able to start afresh…” (Karen Kissane, ‘In A Softer Light’, The Sunday Age, 1 Dec. 2002, Agenda: 4)

    12. A world safe for ‘persons’? “[T]hose old enough to be aware of the killing of disabled infants are necessarily outside the scope of the policy” (PE:192) “Since the favoured breed consists of persons who know they are persons in the Singerian sense, no one could possibly be more special, more protected, than the bioethicists themselves” (Jenny Teichman, ‘The False Philosophy of Peter Singer’, Polemical Papers, Ashgate, 1997: 95)

    13. How safe is ‘safe’? “[I]f we are preference utilitarians, we must allow that a desire to go on living can be outweighed by other desires...” (PE: 99) “[I]n some cases it would be right to kill a person who does not choose to die on the grounds that the person will otherwise lead a miserable life” (PE: 100)

    14. Why not baby-farming? Such practices would violate “the basic attitude of care and protection of infants”, which is something “we must not imperil” (P. Singer and D. Wells, The Reproduction Revolution, Oxford UP, 1984: 148-9) See also: J.A. Laing, ‘Innocence and Consequentialism: Inconsistency, Equivocation and Contradiction in the Philosophy of Peter Singer’, in D.S. Oderberg and J.A. Laing (eds) Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997): 196-224.

    15. When does a non-‘person’ become a ‘person’? “Perhaps...we should have a ceremony a month after birth, at which the infant is admitted to the community. Before that time, infants would not be recognized as having the same right to life [sic] as other people” (emphasis added) (‘Killing Babies Isn’t Always Wrong’, The Spectator,16 Sept. 1995)

    16. The love that dare not bark its name “a Swedish rock drawing from the Bronze Age of a man f***ing a large quadruped of indeterminate species”. “Japanese drawing of a woman enveloped by a giant octopus who appears to be sucking her c**t” (‘Heavy Petting’, Review of Midas Dekkers, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, nerve.com, 3 Jan. 2001)

    17. Nazi policy? What Nazi policy? Are the intentions different? No – killing of people with lives not worth living. Are the motives different? Hard to see how. Some German insight? For a utilitarian, motives are irrelevant Singer: “The obvious explanation…is that Germans are still struggling to deal in a rational way with their past” (‘A German Attack’: 87)

    18. Nazi policies and freedom of speech “Nobody now advocates practices such as were followed by the Nazis, and it would be right to protest if they did” (R.M. Hare to Prof. Georg Meggle, 1 July 1989) Should the Baby Live? is a “fair-minded and well-reasoned treatment of the subject of defective neonates. It does not support anything like the Nazi practices, which involved the killing of children on questionable scientific grounds without the consent of their parents” (ibid; my emphasis)

    19. Free speech violated? Who are the Nazis? Prof. Singer’s opponents! “as if the essence of Nazism were restrictions on freedom of speech” (Berkowitz: 36) “One protester quoted from a passage in which I compare the capacities of intellectually disabled humans and nonhuman animals” (PE: 347)

    20. Free speech violated? A “false and dangerous philosophy” (Teichman) The right of regular access to a public platform “is not a universal human right but a special right. In some cases it goes with wealth and power, and in others with certain kinds of work. It is a privilege which belongs to popes, and politicians, and newspaper proprietors, and journalists, and television programmers. One kind of work the privilege goes with is teaching...” (‘Freedom of Speech and the Public Platform’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (1994): 99-105, at 104. Reprinted in Polemical Papers)

    21. Free speech violated? But: “the privilege is not always deserved. It can be used for good, and also for evil. ...In my view academics abuse the privilege when they advocate ‘euthanasia’ of human beings too young or too old or too ill to answer back” (Teichman, ibid.) “[F]alse philosophy can be dangerous, and...if circumstances prevent its being refuted in print, it is probably all right, in extreme cases, to try to silence it in other ways” (Teichman, ‘False Philosophy’: 87)

    22. Free speech violated? “[S]ome modes of expressing our thoughts may be too dangerous or too offensive to be allowed in a particular place or time” (P. Singer, ‘A German Attack’: 89) “Not Dead Yet says – and I completely agree – that we should not legitimate Singer’s views by giving them a forum. We should not make disabled lives subject to debate” (Harriet McBryde Johnson, ‘Unspeakable Conversations; or How I Spent One Day as Token Cripple at Princeton University’, New York Times Magazine, 16 Feb. 2003: 54)

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