Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#91

Post by throw0101b » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:10 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #74

throw0101b wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, au…

How do you even reach that conclusion based on that sentence? Your quote talks about equivalency, you interpret this as infanticide is ok. Those are two vastly different things?

Peter Singer's FAQ:

> […] Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her or his parents.

> Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, but only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support — which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection — but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

* https://petersinger.info/faq

Do not most people nowadays consider a post-birth entity with the DNA of homo sapiens a person of particular sub-type "infant" (as classified by age)? Singer does not classify them as a person from what I've read.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#92

Post by throw0101b » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #58

throw0101b wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, au…

I agree that in our present society, infanticide is frequently illegal. There have been societies in the past, however, where infanticide e.g. infant exposure was still ultimately a practice; wikipedia tells me that it was extremely common in the stone age. Presumably, it was tan accepted form of population control before easy birth control. Conversely, apostasy was illegal and disgusting in many medieval societies b…

> So whereas your disgust (and our illegality) at infanticide today serves as a good starting point to thinking about its morality, I don't think it's infallible and certainly not a veto over Singer's reasoned argument.

I fail to see where I make any moral judgements on Singer: can you please quote me the parts of my post where I do so?

AFAICT, I simply describe the common contemporary moral stance ("…what most folks would call…"), and what I interpret as Singer's position ("He seems to accept…"). Is stating the facts (AFAICT) taking a moral position on them?

Is stating "Bob (appears to) believe the Earth is flat" the same as stating "I believe the Earth is flat"?

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#93

Post by throw0101b » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 3:16 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #71

throw0101b wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, au…

Have you read any of Singer's writing? You've gone through a wikipedia article and cherry picked out the most provocative aspects of his philosophy, but, given that he's one of the most famous modern ethical philosophers, don't you suspect that there might be some depth to his reasoning?

Peter Singer's FAQ:

> […] Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her or his parents.

> Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, but only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support — which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection — but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

* https://petersinger.info/faq

Do not most people nowadays consider a post-birth entity with the DNA of homo sapiens a person of particular sub-type "infant" (as classified by age)? Singer does not classify them as a person from what I've read.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#94

Post by spacemadness » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #26

It's a bit disappointing to read the comments here, the level is not very high. He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks.

Considering how often I heard from fellow STEM majors in university that studying anything outside STEM was a waste of time, my expectations for an HN philosophy discussion is pretty low.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#95

Post by cinntaile » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

throw0101b wrote: post #91

cinntaile wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even reach that conclusion based on that sentence? Your quote talks about equivalency, you interpret this as infanticide is ok. Those are two vastly different things?

Peter Singer's FAQ: > […] Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to her o…

That is about babies with life-threatening diseases that are being kept alive by medicine who have zero chance of leading any form of normal life.

One chance was more than enough. I assume you're arguing in bad faith at this point.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#96

Post by suoduandao2 » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

giraffe_lady wrote: post #76

philosopher1234 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was interesting and it didn't make me distrust him at all. I can't really tell why it should.

It's literally just the trolley problem, which is valuable and interesting only so far as it shows the limits and practical undecidability of thought experiments like this. Which, morally sophisticated people inevitably find is almost comically sensitive to details of the scenario or context, and that's it's virtually impossible to find a satisfying generalizable solution. And then singer is just like "no. u simply p…

Well, I think his position is more, "u simply pull the lever if you're sure you won't get caught", which logically might require telling other people you wouldn't pull the lever. So in that sense, one can speculate all kinds of things that he would do without telling others. I suspect his idea of proper obfuscation is more in a sense of double meanings - philosophers love those, and I think it was the basis of the 'noble lie' cited upthread.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#97

Post by afarrell » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #52

afarrell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rules like “don’t murder people” don’t ever work. I’ve found it to be a pretty workable rule in living my actual life so far. > such rules more exist as a pretty fiction than as an actual practice I’m curious what life experiences you’ve had which lead you to conclude that “don’t murder people” is so inapplicable as to be fiction. Are you living near Bakhmut?

I mean, war is a trivial counter-example. You're intentionally killing people. There's two ways to go about it. Either you ignore the rules whenever they start getting in the way, or you build huge subjective holes into them.

Or I can try to have rules and values that work for the situations I reasonably expect myself to manage responsibly and I accept that they will fail in extreme cases. The example you gave was WW2, which was arguably the worst catastrophe in human history. It would be impractical for me to try to build a moral system to handle it.

Put it this way: If your friend asks you for advice on how to set up his wedding website, which of the following is good advice?

A) Use Squarespace.

B) Write an HTML & CSS file and put it on github pages.

C) Use Netlify.

D) Set up a multi-region kubernetes cluster with enough storage and capacity to stream the World Cup.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#98

Post by iinnPP » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #77

iinnPP wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Do you have more recent information that shows it is now illegal to forcefully terminate the functionality of a 40-week fetus while in the womb in Canada? Calling it a hole in the rules is inaccurate. It's not a person. You can disagree if you want. My post was informational and intentionally lacking opinion.

FFS. The hole in the rules called out, from the OC you linked: A handful of private member's bills introduced in Parliament over the last couple of decades have tried to remedy what seems to be an arbitrary distinction in law. The most recent was in 2016, when Saskatchewan MP Cathay Wagantall tabled Bill C-225, which would have made it a "separate offence to cause injury or death to a preborn child during the commiss…

It's not a hole, it's working as intended. It is desired by groups in Canada who favor abortion rights[0]

I'm just replying to the other countries laws and including Canada. Which is related to the article really, more so than many countries.

You seem to think I am siding on a negative opinion, but I am not.

0: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/private-members-bill-violen...

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#99

Post by tomcam » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

avgcorrection wrote: post #21

tomcam wrote: post #12

In his book “Practical Ethics” he recommends infanticide up to 2 years old as a logical extension to abortion.

The “cutoff” always comes up in abortion debates, and when someone argues for a very late term abortion, the other side is sure to bring up infanticide. Polite people/amateur philosophers leave it there. Professional philosophers pick up the slack and deal with the heinous leftover questions…

Legislators, and therefore voters must also deal with the heinous leftover questions.

Re: Peter Singer on utilitarianism, influence, and controversial ideas

#100

Post by Paradigm2020 » Sat, Jun 10, 2023, 5:31 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #87

throw0101b wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's a philosopher, he's going to ask thorny questions and sometimes end up with logically sound but inhuman answers. This doesn't really tell us much about him as a person. You can lower your pitch forks. He seems to accept that what most folks would call infanticide is okay: > Similar to his argument for abortion rights, Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, au…

When I was in my teens and early twenties, seriously grappling with establishing my positions on fundamental moral issues for the first time, I thought carefully about abortion, because I didn't want to mindlessly adopt any side's shouted slogans. I wanted to have an independent, logically well-constructed view on the issue. I have not read Singer's position on the issue until just now. His position is basically exac…

Could the baby fully develop outside the womb to it's full fledged human potential is my personal "ideal" cut off date, some use so called point of viability of the fetus [1] but from reading up on it (just now) 28 weeks would be the date for me based on [2]

But in all honesty given the trauma, complications,... involved my simple solution [3] would be to just hand out free pregnancy tests (one for every week of the year) to avoid the problem all together.

The whole abortion thing has just turned into one part of the "culture/identity wars" unfortunately instead of a problem that we as a society want to fix in the best way for everyone. [4]

Infanticide was still practiced even in late 19th century in Europe/France by poor farmers who were starving [5]

I think the whole point of the philosopher is just to do his "branding" as the logical "efficient altruism" solution would be to just bring the kid to an orphanage.

Unfortunately every year it gets harder and harder to get attention and hence these silly "solutions" that are meant to force people to form an opinion pro or con.

---

[1] depends on technological possibility and availability, generally considered 21 weeks in USA. [2] Of those that are born before 28 weeks, many do not survive. Those that do face high rates of disability and other medical complications. (the gap is getting wider between top end and middle, again complicating references here) [3] emperor for a day simple solution. [4] morning after and abortion pills that can be used within a week would be the logical outcome for the problem if there was no ideological nonsense to it. [5] Geert Mak - in Europe book, don't have it at hand but 1/3rd of the book is dedicated to his sources, if anyone really want his reference will find it tomorrow.