Why Peter Singer is Wrong

David S. Oderberg
Princeton, 6 December 2006
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)
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”)
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)
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.)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)