Talk:Peter Singer/Archive 1

message: I very much doubt that "disabled infants he wishes to kill" could be classed as NPOV. To my knowledge Singer has never expressed a wish to kill anyone. He has argued that in certain circumstances it is ethical to kill disabled infants, which is not the same thing. Adam 14:27, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: "He wishes to kill [infants]" not NPOV

message: I am upset by Singer's views (which I have read outside of this article.) He thinks it is Ok to kill sick babies, sick old people, and to have sex animals, yet there is barely any criticism of him at all in this article. I can say with near certainty that 99% of Americans would want this man behind bars. Considering such extremist views (many of which would land him in jail if he practiced what he preached), the lack of presenting an opposing point of view in this article is a derelection of our POV policy. RK 15:03, Dec 6, 2003 (UTC)
:Whoa, that makes an ad hominem argument (based on lies) and an argument from popularity in just one paragraph.  I'm quite certain that Peter Singer does practice what he preached - i.e. that he really does not consume animal products as far as this is practicable.  Whether that should land him in jail is another issue - a militant vegan-hater like you might think so, but presently there are no laws against it in any industrialized country I'm aware of.
:While you are certainly FUBAR (substitute "redemption" for R), I recommend that people genuinely interested in Singer's views should read Animal Liberation instead of all the lies and disinformation about it that the likes of you love to sputter.  If people don't want to pay for the book, they should still find it possible to borrow it from a library or someone interested in the topic of animal ethics.  If people don't want to do any of this, they are well advised to just shut up about Singer.  Aragorn2 10:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Peter Singer upsets me

message: * He holds the interests of all beings which are capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration (Reading this, I want to know how PS defines suffer. Does a fish suffer? and a jellyfish? I'd like an explanation.) gbog
** Although I don't know exactly how he defines it, I would surmise that suffering to PS requires an appropriately developed and powerful brain. In the same way that a dog and a newborn can neither "understand that [they] have a past and a future" (The President of Good and Evil, p. 42) and consequently may not merit our absolute protection, there is evidence that many animals simply lack the brain capacity to feel pain and therefore cannot suffer (see this article, for example). Timbo
***It might help to distinguish the philosophical question from the empirical one.  Singer's position as a philosopher is quite clear: anything that can suffer deserves ethical consideration.  The empirical question of what can suffer is one for the scientists to answer, not the philosophers.  Incidentally, Singer's position on that point is that since he doesn't know which animals can and cannot suffer, he gives them all the benefit of the doubt and doesn't eat any of them. Markalexander100 05:12, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW you won't find many philosophers agreeing that the question of which animals suffer is a scientific one. Any more than that scientists can or will discover what conscious experience is (even though conscious experience presumably has something to do with the brain). It's primarily a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. Ben Finn 12:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting comment, but in my opinion as flawed as the one it responds to. Science as it is today is rather clueless concerning the hard problem of consciousness. However, if we accept that sentience is part of reality (otherwise, why should we care at all whether other beings are sentient or not), then it's presence or absence in a given being definitely is a scientific issue. David Olivier 15:00, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable sentences and more 

message: Just wanted to question the section about Singer's mother. According to a BBC interview broadcast (most recently) last night (29 June 2004), his mother was not euthanised because a decision was made among Singer's siblings. Singer said that had it been purely his decision, he would have chosen euthanasia. I don't know how well this fits in with previous statements he may have made, but perhaps those previous statements don't give the full picture. Dankelleher 11:37, 30 June 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Issues with Singer's mom

message: I've pruned some of the discussion, bearing in mind that this is a place for describing Singer's views and the criticism of them, not for us to debate those views.
I'm very suspicious of the comment that These views themselves [on bestiality] are regarded as criminal in a few legal systems.  Can anyone give a source/be more specific?  It seems very unlikely to me that a hypothetical comment such as Singer's would be illegal in itself. Markalexander100 08:25, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, hearing music or (for a woman) having one's bare hands exposed in public was regarded as criminal under the Taliban.  So there may well be some legal systems that have Orwellian criminal provisions against such "thought crimes". Aragorn2 13:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trimming and bestiality 

message: It is my view that this bestiality section is inappropriate to the current state of the article. The article is not long enough for the inclusion of what is a brief comment in relation to the entire body of Singer's work. 
LegCircus 01:29, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)
:I entirely agree that the article is not long enough.   The solution is to write something more. Markalexander100 05:11, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bestiality 

message: I removed the comment "(Of course he feels in a position to deem what the "benefit" is.  The benefit for who?)" in the section "Animal liberation" and replaced it with "Due to the subjectivity of the term "benefit", controversy exists about this and his other views." I thought the old comment was very encocyclopaedic and POV. Feel free to change my sentence.--capnez 21:56, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV sentence removed 

message: I've restored the sentence about Singer not supporting animal rights, with the word "rights" emphasised.  Singer's philosophy, like that of any utilitarian, is that animals (and humans) don't have "rights", but that utilitarian considerations mean that they ought to be treated in certain ways.  It's perhaps still not as clear as it could be, but Singer himself makes the distinction and I think it's worth retaining here.  --Andrew Norman 22:20, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Singer believes that animals should be given rights and protections in law, but I'm not sure he says anywhere that they have moral rights, whether as subjects-of-a-life (well, definitely not that for Singer) or in any derivative sense. It's a long time since I read Animal Liberation though, so maybe I've just forgotten him saying that. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:24, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rights vs utilitarianism 

message: I've just created this section. It's my first addition to Wikipedia, and I'd welcome comments.
Further to earlier discussion, I'm strongly of the opinion that the section "Views on inter-species relationships" should be largely or entirely deleted. Since most of Singer's books aren't even mentioned, it seems wrong to devote a large paragraph to a short review which Singer has not elaborated or commented upon since. --Kingbot 16:49, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, so I've shortened it. Ben Finn 12:30, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other views 

message: The article, as it currently stands, implies strongly that Singer's views on utilitarian ethics justifying infanticide, at least in some cases, are original to him and generally unique.  However, Michael Tooley's 1972 paper "Abortion and Infanticide" (Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, pp. 37-65) makes essentially the same argument.  If Singer's arguments don't predate that paper, it should at least be noted that Singer didn't pull this out of thin air.  In either case, it should be clarified that he's not alone in this viewpoint, although it is still definitely a minority one. --Delirium 02:08, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
: Agreed. Indeed, Singer cites Tooley in PE, and makes it clear that his views on infanticide are shared by a substantial minority of bioethicists and members of the medical community. --Kingbot 21:12, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Singer, Tooley, and infanticide 

message: Singer uses the term "person" to refer to "those elements of 'human being' not covered by 'Homo sapien'". Singer reject the "sanctity of all human life" and  only awards the right to life to beings which he defines as "persons". Persons are, "beings that correspond to the idicators of humanhood"(fletcher). These include self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future/past, the capacity to relate to others, concern for others as well as communication and curiosity. Singer notes that not all human beings are persons and that some animals are. These include the great apes and possibly whales, dolphins and all mammals.
*All quotes are from Practical Ethics.
Lost in space 11:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personhood 

message: I just read his article "Heavy Petting", and I'd like to state for the record that Mr. Singer is a fool. A bloody dangerous fool, if people are actually listening to his stupidity. I will be using Singer as an example of the absurdity of Utilitarianism. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:22, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your cogent and rational critique of Peter Singer's position.  The fact that you took great pains to back up your logically well-structured and excellently formulated views with hard factual evidence most impresses me.  There can be no doubt that the philosopher's shrine to be built for you will be a place of pilgrimage for millenia to come.  Aragorn2 13:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: The following statement, attributed to Peter Singer, appears more than 1,500 times on Google:
"If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition."
The few sites I found which give any source for this say "The Deweese Report, November 1998" - but that does not lead me any further. Does anyone here know anything about this quote? Is it bogus? Or, if authentic, what is its context? - Haukur 21:15, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Judeo-Christian religious tradition quote 

message: The latest revert removed this category.  I feel that was a mistake; the category is both useful and clearly applicable.  Singer is well-known for being just that, an atheist philosopher. Also, despite the wording of that rv, the category does indeed exist, so I am restoring the reference to it. Luis Dantas 11:26, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category: Atheist philosophers 

message: I took the liberty of removing the Animal Liberation Front link from the "See Also" heading.  Since Peter Singer neither supports nor condones the actions of organizations that break the law, I felt that the presence of the link could be misleading.  (BTW, this is my first major edit on Wikipedia...)
Armybandgeek 02:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense to me. And welcome! :) Haukur 03:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm afraid that your wrong on that one.  He does support some law-breaking.  See the second-to-last chapter in "Practical Ethics" or see his history of the movement, entitled "The Animal Liberation Movement".  What Singer does reject is violence in the cause.  The A.L.F. also rejects violence.  Whether the two are defining the word "violence" in the same way is another issue.  Epa101 09:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Animal Liberation Front references