Section 14 Group 3 (11/13)

Hello all, sorry this is a day late. On Tuesday we were supposed to be talking about Peter Singer. Singer was a modern gadfly. He asked questions that challenged widely held assumptions and argued with people about their beliefs. One of the things brought up in the chapter was the idea that if you are in a garden with a pond and hear a splash and then screaming. You would immediately go to rescue the child that you thought had fallen in because it would be seen as morally incorrect for you to know the child's life was a risk and then simply stand by and do nothing when you could have saved his or her life. He then relates this to the starving children in Africa. You have the power to donate money and save a child from starvation, but most people don't. The question is why would you go save a child drowning in a pond in front of you, but you wouldn't donate money to save starving children in Africa?
Singer also questioned euthanasia. His views on this caused some people to view him as a Nazi because he thought that if a person is in a permanent vegetative state with no hope of recovery, then euthanasia was the right thing to do. But because the common belief is that it is always wrong to kill another human being, he was very unpopular with most people. He also was an advocate against animal testing and believed that we shouldn't eat meat.
The basis of his philosophy is the idea of consistency, that is treating similar cases in a similar way.  With this idea human pain and animal pain are considered equal, so "if harming an animal brings about more pain than harming a human being, then it's better to harm the human being if you have to harm one of them." Obviously there will be many people opposed to this view. Singer would call them "speciesist."
While you may disagree with Singer, you can't ague with the fact that he does a very good job at making you think about things. This is because his arguments are well reasoned and supported with well researched facts.
On Thursday, we are talking about Alex Neill and the paradox of tragedy.