Peter Singer on Morality in the Era of Bernie Madoff

http://bit.ly/k7ffDG - Philosopher Peter Singer discusses the state of global ethics.

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[SisyphusRedeemed]

1) He does not advocate killing children; that is a libelous distortion of his views.

2) Even if he did advocate the killing of children, how does that bear on his thoughts on other matters? If he has good arguments with respect to ethics and economics, his poor arguments in another field is irrelevant.

3) No serious person says that Singer is right simply because he is a college professor. To suggest that is to imply argument from authority, which Singer would denounce as fallacious.

[yvadmil]

Mengele?!!! Dr.Singer lost three grand-parents in Nazi death camps! As for

Singer`s authentic views on euthanasia for serverely handicaped babies and "non-personhood" please check out the "William Crawley meets Peter Singer"

interviews (on you tube).

[MrJonkelp]

some really good stuff here

[xtremetom180]

some sweet info here

[shellybirdy]

some really good stuff here

[kyleisahall]

That seems like a pretty rational argument... not exactly emotionally appealing, but that's not the point of philosophy now is it. A child with no long-term prospects for quality of life, who only can be kept alive at enormous societal expense, and has little or no likelihood of being a healthy and contributing member of our social economy provides very little equity.

[seanstrnad]

@SisyphusRedeemed Of course, I didn't mean to imply that.. but I'm still a bit troubled by the idea of euthanizing disabled infants... I mean who should really determine whether the quality of life for a person will be worth living--not only when this human being is unable to make the decision themself (I can support this, like the Schiavo case), BUT ALSO when the human is still an infant and hasn't been given a chance to beat the odds (Ph.d's do make mistakes). That makes me nervous...

[SisyphusRedeemed]

@seanstrnad He thinks euthanasia should have no age limitation at all. If someone's life consists of nothing but suffering then they should have a right to die. But to qualify as euthanasia it has to be done for the good of the one being killed. So he's not talking about killing kids just because we don't want them.

[seanstrnad]

@SisyphusRedeemed I have heard him argue that some infants up to 28 days old should be euthanized.... ehhhh.

[peteface24]

@Drgamedood He was the first philosopher to publicise Act Utilitarianism- in the late C18th. But Berkeley wrote a little about his view of Rule Utilitarianism in the early C18th. Unlike Bentham it was not a central part of his philosophy and he didn't publicise the view. (Though the terminology of Act vs. Rule Utilitarianism was only first used in the mid C20th by Harsanyi and Rawls.)

[Drgamedood]

@peteface24 I thought Jeremy Bentham was the first utilitarian.