A dissertation submitted to Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of. The matter is stated to be embodied in the dissertation entitled A Critical Evaluation of Peter Singer's Ethics submitted for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Tanuja Kalita, a student of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati , India, was carried out under my supervision. For Bentham, good is that which brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people.
According to utilitarianism, if the consequences of an action result in happiness, then the action is right, if it results in unhappiness, then the action is wrong. Preference utilitarianism, on the other hand, bases the rightness or wrongness of an action, not on pleasure and pain or any particular ideal, but on the preferences of the person performing the action. In the case of euthanasia, Singer argues that a person's preferences override the preferences of other persons.
This chapter also contains a critique of Singer's concept of euthanasia and evaluation of the arguments.
Peter Singer on the Principles of Suffering, Person and Preference Satisfaction
I use the term 'person' to refer to a being with this kind of self-awareness – in the words of the philosopher James Rachel, a being who can live a biological life and not just a biological life. It is an aggregate of people's preferences, and thus universalization is achieved. In the preference theory, it is possible that an individual's quality of life can be revealed by the individual's preferences.
One of the main points in the criticism of preference utilitarianism is its close connection with desire. And in Singer's ethics, the individual's preferences, or more technically, the person's preference, is of supreme importance in making ethical decisions. The difference in individuals' decisions is due to their variation in their preferences.
In this case of the depressed person, Singer recognizes that the person's essential desire is not to die.
Peter Singer on Animal Liberation: Criticisms &
Response
For Singer, all people are equal based on the principle of equal consideration of interest. Therefore, a mouse should be considered, but not a stone, while discussing the ethics of the act. One of Singer's prominent arguments against killing animals. it outweighs the suffering of animals and therefore should not be practiced.
Animals are used in experiments, and especially those animals that seem to have developed cognitive sophistications, like those of humans, are used extensively in experiments. In the process, almost all the animals are made very sick, before some finally die and others pull through. One of the relevant questions regarding Singer's arguments about animal welfare is whether or not animals have rights.
Diana Mertz Hsieh (Hsieh, 2005) comparing the position of Regan and Singer regarding animal rights asserts that neither position, deontological or utilitarian, comes up with a satisfactory argument for the protection of animals. A similar position is found in Michael Fox's book, The Case for Animal Experimentation (Fox, 1986) where he tries to argue that animals are not members of the moral community and therefore the human being belonging to a moral community has no obligation to animals. the mentally disabled person in his moral view of the community as a human being. He says those who are supporting every aspect of the animal rights movement are completely wrong.
Mark Rowland claims that although Peter Singer's interpretation of animal rights is influential, it is by no means satisfactory. utilitarianism, by its very nature, is committed to an inadequate understanding of the concept of equal consideration. Again, this value must be of the nature of intrinsic value, which he argues is lacking in Singer's Animal Liberation. One of the arguments related to Singer's position on animal welfare is of an epistemological nature rather than an ethical one.
The epistemological problem arises from the position that it is impossible to compare human pain intensity with non-human animal pain intensity. As some of the arguments against Singer talk about his conception of animal rights, his understanding of animal suffering and similar issues, the other perspective and arguments about Singer's position come up as an issue that questions Singer's intentions.
Peter Singer on Abortion: Criticisms &
When a fetus is spontaneously expelled from the womb, it is called a miscarriage or 'spontaneous abortion'. It is wrong to kill an innocent human being – premise (1) A human fetus is an innocent human being – premise (2) Therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus – conclusion. While Singer is also concerned with this, Singer's argument for abortion also concentrates on the first premise.
So Singer tries to reject the first premise that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. For him, one must consider the fetus for what it is - the real qualities it possesses and the value of its life. There is a sense in which the second premise is true (the embryo belongs to the species) but in that sense of 'human being' it is not true that every human being has a right to live.
Since Singer does not consider any fetus to be a person, it is not an unethical act for a person to choose abortion. For stage one, that is, 'birth', Singer says: "The location of a being inside or outside the womb - should not make that much difference to the wrongness of killing it." (Singer, Practical Ethics, 1993, p. 139) The second phase viability is marked up to the point at which a human life properly begins. Singer argues: "Abortion opponents really want to uphold the right to human life from conception, whether conscious or not..." (Singer, Practical Ethics, 1993, p. 142).
For Singer, as long as the fetus has no meaning, then it is not unethical to have an abortion. Singer says that there is no harm in killing the newborn baby because it is not an autonomous being capable of making a choice. Singer asserts that although the early fetus is of the human type, it is not a full-grown human being and is not a person.
But, for Marry Anne Warren, it is not the case that due to the criterion of sensitivity late term abortion cannot be justified. He writes that Singer's argument is not acceptable because of the extreme rationality of Singer's position.
Singer on Euthanasia: Criticisms & Response
Conclusion
I have already mentioned that Singer argues on the basis of his concept of person on some of the issues such as abortion and euthanasia. One of the major issues with Singer's concept of person is that his concept is rather vague and may not be universally accepted. The criticism is based on the notion that person is an 'abstract' one that cannot be conceptualized by everyone in the same way.
For example, when science discovers the ability to feel in the lower forms of organisms, then, according to Singer's view, they should be considered because science would reveal that they also feel pain. Then, in this case, it only suggests that Singer's concept of the person, taken in its abstract sense or in its scientific sense, presents a problem. I see that at a conceptual level there is a consistent account of his position regarding the relationship between preferences and self-interest.
When we apply this perspective to the context of human affairs, it implies that the human fetus should not be worthy of moral consideration at some of the stages of fetal development. In these arguments, I should not conclude that Singer defends a person's preferences (however stupid) as above and beyond the suffering of sentient beings. This argument must be seen in the context where it denounces the idea of traditional morality which privileges humans above and beyond animal species.
Singer's point is that apart from our sense of speciesism, which leads us to accept animal food as something that is not unethical, when in the case of one's actions towards non-human humans, we immediately claim that it is unethical. Singer's critiques such as Luc Ferry, Laing and others do take note of the implications of Singer's position. Singer's ethics put a lot of emphasis on the person's idea of judging the rightness or wrongness of the act, particularly with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
Other philosophical systems, such as Buddhism, also talk about the concept of a person, but they do not base the moral worth of an action solely on whether an entity is a person or not. Although such philosophical systems also deal with the idea of the person, they do not base their ethics only on the idea of who a person is; their ethics place great emphasis on the character of the moral agent.
Bibliography
Retrieved March 23, 2013, from Project Syndicate: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-ethics-of-eating. Retrieved September 24, 2010, from animal rights korea: http://animalrightskorea.org/essays/peter-singer-ethics-and-animals.html. Retrieved March 13, 2013, from Project Syndicate: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-right-to-die.
Retrieved March 24, 2013, from Project Syndicate: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-real-abortion- tragedy-by-peter-singer. Retrieved December 7, 2012, from NDTV: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/ireland-abortion-row-human-rights-commission-registers-case-299627. Retrieved February 22, 2011, from Animal Ethics.blogspot: https://www.uta.edu/philosophy/faculty/burgess- jackson/Oderberg%20on%20Animal%20Rights%20(Final%20Version).pdf.
Retrieved March 25, 2011, from IBNLive: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/full-text-supreme-courts-judgment-on-aruna-ramachandra-euthanasia-petition/145201-53.html. Retrieved February 8, 2013 from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death-definition/.
Research Output
Publications
