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Singer and His Critics
This is the first book devoted to the work of Peter Singer, one of the leaders of the practical ethics movement, and one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
- GenresPhilosophy
380 pages, Paperback
First published June 18, 1999
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26 people want to read
About the author
Dale Jamieson
31 books20 followersDale Jamieson has held visiting appointments at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is currently Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, Affiliated Professor of Law, Affiliated Professor of Medical Ethics, and Director of the Animal Studies Initiative at New York University. He has published widely in environmental philosophy, animal studies, and ethics: most recently Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle to Stop Climate Change Failed—and What It Means For Our Future (Oxford, 2014). Love in the Anthropocene is his first work of fiction.
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April 7, 2018Next
Refuting Peter Singer's Ethical Theory: The Importance of Human Dignity (2002) Krantz
Jamieson: Practical Ethics Movement
Singer’s MA thesis is “Why should I be moral.”
If animals suffer when they are raised for food, then we should stop eating them. If giving 10 percent of out income...would save the lives without depriving us of any comparable goods, then we should…
p 8 willingness to argue for unpopular views and to take strong actions.
pluralism
wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(philoso...
moral agency
wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_agency
Jackson
Singer’s response
270 I am less firm in my non-cognitivism than Jackson suggests. This is, in part, because I cannot deny the plausibility of Henry Sidgwick’s claim that it is a self-evident truth that from ‘he point of view of the Universe’ the good of one individual is of no greater significance than the good of any other.
272 Jackson is concerned [...] technical difficulty for philosophers, not a practical problem that hinders our ability to draw the right inferences from imperatives.
273 The reasoning needed to resolve these debates goes beyond the formal argument patterns with which Jackson’s essay is concerned.
Smith: Definition of Moral
38 neutralism vs descriptivism - The neutralist view is when a moral principle is overridden by any other principles held. The desciptivist view is when a moral principle satisfies certain criteria.
41 is-ought gap (to Singer’s response on p 276)
http://web.archive.org/web/2018010223...
wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem
43 there is evidently a considerable problem involved in securing the motivation of those who have desires which would not be satisfied by doing what morality requires of them. In order to secure moral motivation, we would have to cause them to have a desire for some relevant end.
[describing the rational route]
44 getting people morally motivated
47 maximally informed, coherent and unified set of desires
---
Singer’s response
277 [I]f I had a maximally informed and coherent and unified set of set, then what I would desire, under the constraint of being concerned with human flourishing, impartially conceived, would be to give whatever I can spare to famine relief; but without that constraint, my overriding desire would be to own a Porsche.
279 There are only two possibilities. Either everyone who has a maximally informed and coherent and unified set of sesires will have an overriding impartial concern for human flourishing, or they will not. [...] it could still be true that we could persuade people to act morally by ensuring that they are better informed, and drawing their attention to the conflicts between various desires that they already have. The arguments I use in How Are We to Live? [Chapters 10 & 11] to defend the view that an ethical life is likely to be a more satisfying one than a life devoted to earning more money and consuming more goods could be seen as an attempt to inform people about the consequences of different ways of living, and thus to help them arrive at a maximally informed, coherent and unified set of desires.
Notes - Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: In section XI “Hume’s Law” = “is/ought problem” (It is never possible to deduce evaluative conclusions from factual premises.)
Solomon: Expanding Circle
http://web.archive.org/web/2018010223...
bona fide - genuine
veldt - open grazing area
scare quotes - used when they're not required--eliciting doubt
sentimental - influenced by feelings
au courant - up-to-date
saccharine - nauseatingly sweet
culling - select
66 wave of his hand, indicating that there are important things to talk about and do.
mawkish - sickly sentimental
67 [Solomon believes Singer should use sentimentality more - thesis:] This is the compassionate Peter Singer. He emerges clearly from the descriptions and the photographs of animals (and elsewhere people) suffering. [As though the real Singer should] appeal not to reason...but to sentiments.
mauvaise foi - French for bad faith: wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existen...
69 - “morality”--concerns for propriety, for social and person well-being, for public as well as personal “flourishing” [Plato: Happiness]
69 Some are as straightforward as the starvation or malnutrition of millions of children or…
71 - Altruism is not selfish but it is certainly not selfless...
isotropic antenna (402 “Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics” by Ulaby)
nice to other people because they are nice to us
71 resemblance as the key to sympathy; we feel “closest” to those who are (or seem to be) most like us.
71 Reason no doubt can play a role in this expansion, but the primary ingredients of this growing awareness are perception, sympathy and reciprocity.
75 concern and curiosity
what allows the circle to expand is not reason … but rather knowledge and understanding in the sense of … circumstances of other people … empathy
76 not, first of all, because of any rational principles but because of our cultivated and expanded emotional awareness
76 “distance” is much more often a matter of ignorance … are not known to us.
praxis - practical application or exercise of a branch of learning
81 Compassion … is the motivationa seed from which all ethical action emerges.
83 Ethics begins with caring…
Crisp: Mill v Singer (1860s to 1980s)
Intersubjective - agreement or common-sense
88 self-interest and moraity conflict
90 egoists, or persons who are are giving local interests a skewed weighing in their practical reason, is that they are making a mistake. Without that … no reason to change our lives.
Ethics require us to go beyond ‘I’ and ‘you’
91 interests matter - Parfit (1993, p. 57) calls the ‘priority view’ - give priority to the worse off
93 It is clear that both Mill and Singer believe that the valuable life lies in doing certain things; in particular doing certain things for others.
95 An instrumentalist … sees morality merely as a social phenomenon.
98 contractualism
Arneson: Humans Morally Equal
105 “Singer Problem” - moral status of a being vary from individual to individual by degree
112 Priority View - give the benefit to this worse-off person
113 egalitarian theories
118 autonomy - moral freedom
perspicuously - plain to understanding
120 to do what is right can be factored into two components, the ability to decide what is right and the ability to dispose oneself to do what one thinks is right.
123 current common-sense morality is speciesist
salutary - health giving or beneficial
salient - standing out
epistemic - relating to knowledge
Gruen: Impartial Utilitarians
129 not always motivated to follow the conclusions of rational arguments
parial considerations
132 what makes racist or sexist practices wrong is not that they are irrational or inconsistent … but that they are unfair and unjust, harmful and cruel.
134 Utilitarian theory is thought to be substatively impartial because it claims not only [greatest good for greatest number], but that the effects of any action on individuals are to be weighted impersonally. (“equal consideration of interests” ~ Singer)
135 Just as Singer’s substantive impartiality condemns granting additional consideration to the interests or preferences of one’s racial or ethnic group, so does it condemn granting additional consideration to the interest or preferences of humans over non-humans, simply because they are humans.
139 The substantive utilitarian requirement of impartiality--that is, the requirement that an agent detach him or herself from personal concern and see that concern as one among many equally s significiant concerns...would often be forced to act against the interests of a lover, friend, or family member if doing so would bring about greater good overall. [dinner restaurant example]
Impartial utilitarian morality appears to require the sacrifice of relationships and any other personal interests or concerns if, when judged from an impartial perspective, the sacrifice contributes to more overall good.
In his recent work Singer, following Hare, has suggested as much, and appears to how advocate a two-level view...in the long-run.
149 Especially considering that, “in 1995, it’s true that, in each of the past 30 years, well over 10 million children [more than 27k/day] died from readily preventable causes,” and the cost of preventing such deaths is relatively low for the everyone reading this foodnote.
McGinn: Our Duties to Animals and the Poor
150 There is, on any account, much preventable [unnecissary] suffering in the world, both animal and human.
[Syllogisms:]
Argument A
It is morally wrong to cause the suffering and death of animals unnecessarily
We do cause the suffering and death of animals unnecessarily
Therefore:
What we do to animals is morally wrong
Argument B
It is morally wrong to let people suffer and die unnecessarily
We do let people suffer and die unnecessarily
Therefore:
What we do in respect of suffering and dying people is morally wrong
151 But the force of “unnecessarily” is that thses are not actions in which the ends really justify the means, since the benefit we derive is not commensurte with the harm that is inflicted. A large evil is caused for the sake of a small good.
152 exploiting animals … animal’s life will be saed and we will have a somewhat less tasty meal … the starving child’s life will be saved while we forgo an amusing visit to the cinema.
152 The first is that it is not necessary to derive the argument from some general form of utilitarianism.
153 “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing something of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” p 177 “we ought to prevent as much suffering as we can without sacrificing something else of comparable moral importance” p 181 “Famine, Affluence and Morality”
---
Singer’s response
303 I didn't want to limit my argument to utilitarians [...] I therefore used the phrase 'comparable moral importance' rather than 'comparable suffering', in order to allow readers to judge for themselves what is of comparable moral importance."
---
154 For the principle is quite neutral as to the relative locations of the individuals involved, and Singer tells us that “we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us” p 178 Just as we cannot discriminate on the basis of skin color or sex or species, so we cannot discriminate on the basis of geography
154 anodyne - soothing agent
155 Suppose you are a beautiful women sexually desired by many men. [...] Should you do it? Of course not: why should your your life be made into a tool for the satisfaction of other people’s desires? [...] not “your problem.” [...] prima facie [LAW: based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise] principle of action
156 important values are sacrificed to generalized altruism
157 But I see nothing in Singer’s discussion to block this kind of consequence [equalizing well-being].
158 slippery slope toward absurd levels of self-sacrifice
158 Yet we are also aware that we can do something to help the suffers.
...give up pleasures that form no part of what makes my life significant to me.
159 it is just an ad hoc rule of thumb
159 “socialism”
160 To suppose so is to succumb to sentimentality [Solomon thinks that Singer doesn’t use this enough--and that his arguent is too rational.]
contentious - state of contending
Kamm: Feminine Ethics: Distance in Morality
163 many people find meaningful lives though work and personal relations and rarely grow out of attachment to those.
militates - have an effect
maximin - the largest of a series of minima
168 a pain per se is equally bad in whichever species it occurs
169 rational agency -
wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent
aggregationist
oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/ac...
“total view” totalism
177 role of distance in generating or eliminating obligations
178 whether distance per se matters
In Overseas, money is a means to saving someone. In Pond, money will be lost as a consequence of wading in, which is the means to saving someone.
salience - vividness
supererogatory - not required or essential
189 intuition that nearness matters morally does not
efficacious - effective
193 the means belong to the victim
Holton and Langton: Empathy and Animal Ethics
solipsism - self is all that can be known to exist (Descartes)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
213 moral salience
214 psychology, knowing how it feels to be in the shoes of others
220 So far this is a matter of psychology.
shod
sanguine
coypu
parochial
requisite
229 But he is eclectic in his philosophical methodologies. [...] Alongside the endorsements of Hare lie counsels on the dangers of sentimentality and anthropomorphism.
sui generis - unique
“to indicate an idea, an entity, or a reality which cannot be reduced to a lower concept or included in a higher concept” ~ Wikipedia
Hare: Why I Am only a Demi-vegetarian
235 as a moral philosopher, I am pretty confident that the best ethical theory is a combination of Kantianism with utilitarianism (Hare 1993). [I think he’s refering to his two-level form of utilitarianism.]
ostentatiously - showy or pretentious way to impress
canvassed - to examine carefully; investigate by inquiry; discuss; debate
243 ‘specist’
Extra
Rolston III
pyrric -
249 - plants
254 - objective gestalt
259 - loci of value
a fortiori - conclusion, there is stronger evidence than previously accepted
endemic - restricted/peculiar to a region
atorium - suspension of activity
feral 1. savage 2. wild
mutatis mutandis - making necessary alterations, not affecting the main point (used when comparing two or more cases or situations)
somatically - affecting the body
Ecosystems have no “interests” … But that is to make a category mistake
265 Its esse is percipi.
Jackson: Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism - ethical sentences are not capable of truth (related to subjectivism/objectivism)
Words
39 sympathy and benevolence contrasted → self-centered existence devoted to nothing but selfish concerns
68 rarely strays more than a page without a concrete, real-life problem in his mind
151 substantial amounts of money to charities
acts and omissions are morally unacceptable
“the trill of the chase” [fishing]
175 responsible for causing their own plight
77 Instead of sympathy for someone in a plight, we supply a context … instead are failures
central moral issues of today
86 Richard Taylor’s claim that the life of Sisyphus would be imbued with meaning were he to desire to rolle stones up hills (Singer 1995a, p 196).
92 social creatures, and ethics develops as a practice among us to regulate our lives and enable the achievements of ends we hold in common (Singer 1979a, p. 209)
93 no amount of reflection will show a commitment to an ethical life to be trivial or pointless. (Singer, 1995, p. 218)
whose misfortune is greatest
imagine yourself in the place of another
impersonal perspective
independence of the personal point of view
Refuting Peter Singer's Ethical Theory: The Importance of Human Dignity (2002) Krantz
Jamieson: Practical Ethics Movement
Singer’s MA thesis is “Why should I be moral.”
If animals suffer when they are raised for food, then we should stop eating them. If giving 10 percent of out income...would save the lives without depriving us of any comparable goods, then we should…
p 8 willingness to argue for unpopular views and to take strong actions.
pluralism
wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(philoso...
moral agency
wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_agency
Jackson
Singer’s response
270 I am less firm in my non-cognitivism than Jackson suggests. This is, in part, because I cannot deny the plausibility of Henry Sidgwick’s claim that it is a self-evident truth that from ‘he point of view of the Universe’ the good of one individual is of no greater significance than the good of any other.
272 Jackson is concerned [...] technical difficulty for philosophers, not a practical problem that hinders our ability to draw the right inferences from imperatives.
273 The reasoning needed to resolve these debates goes beyond the formal argument patterns with which Jackson’s essay is concerned.
Smith: Definition of Moral
38 neutralism vs descriptivism - The neutralist view is when a moral principle is overridden by any other principles held. The desciptivist view is when a moral principle satisfies certain criteria.
41 is-ought gap (to Singer’s response on p 276)
http://web.archive.org/web/2018010223...
wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem
43 there is evidently a considerable problem involved in securing the motivation of those who have desires which would not be satisfied by doing what morality requires of them. In order to secure moral motivation, we would have to cause them to have a desire for some relevant end.
[describing the rational route]
44 getting people morally motivated
47 maximally informed, coherent and unified set of desires
---
Singer’s response
277 [I]f I had a maximally informed and coherent and unified set of set, then what I would desire, under the constraint of being concerned with human flourishing, impartially conceived, would be to give whatever I can spare to famine relief; but without that constraint, my overriding desire would be to own a Porsche.
279 There are only two possibilities. Either everyone who has a maximally informed and coherent and unified set of sesires will have an overriding impartial concern for human flourishing, or they will not. [...] it could still be true that we could persuade people to act morally by ensuring that they are better informed, and drawing their attention to the conflicts between various desires that they already have. The arguments I use in How Are We to Live? [Chapters 10 & 11] to defend the view that an ethical life is likely to be a more satisfying one than a life devoted to earning more money and consuming more goods could be seen as an attempt to inform people about the consequences of different ways of living, and thus to help them arrive at a maximally informed, coherent and unified set of desires.
Notes - Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: In section XI “Hume’s Law” = “is/ought problem” (It is never possible to deduce evaluative conclusions from factual premises.)
Solomon: Expanding Circle
http://web.archive.org/web/2018010223...
bona fide - genuine
veldt - open grazing area
scare quotes - used when they're not required--eliciting doubt
sentimental - influenced by feelings
au courant - up-to-date
saccharine - nauseatingly sweet
culling - select
66 wave of his hand, indicating that there are important things to talk about and do.
mawkish - sickly sentimental
67 [Solomon believes Singer should use sentimentality more - thesis:] This is the compassionate Peter Singer. He emerges clearly from the descriptions and the photographs of animals (and elsewhere people) suffering. [As though the real Singer should] appeal not to reason...but to sentiments.
mauvaise foi - French for bad faith: wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existen...
69 - “morality”--concerns for propriety, for social and person well-being, for public as well as personal “flourishing” [Plato: Happiness]
69 Some are as straightforward as the starvation or malnutrition of millions of children or…
71 - Altruism is not selfish but it is certainly not selfless...
isotropic antenna (402 “Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics” by Ulaby)
nice to other people because they are nice to us
71 resemblance as the key to sympathy; we feel “closest” to those who are (or seem to be) most like us.
71 Reason no doubt can play a role in this expansion, but the primary ingredients of this growing awareness are perception, sympathy and reciprocity.
75 concern and curiosity
what allows the circle to expand is not reason … but rather knowledge and understanding in the sense of … circumstances of other people … empathy
76 not, first of all, because of any rational principles but because of our cultivated and expanded emotional awareness
76 “distance” is much more often a matter of ignorance … are not known to us.
praxis - practical application or exercise of a branch of learning
81 Compassion … is the motivationa seed from which all ethical action emerges.
83 Ethics begins with caring…
Crisp: Mill v Singer (1860s to 1980s)
Intersubjective - agreement or common-sense
88 self-interest and moraity conflict
90 egoists, or persons who are are giving local interests a skewed weighing in their practical reason, is that they are making a mistake. Without that … no reason to change our lives.
Ethics require us to go beyond ‘I’ and ‘you’
91 interests matter - Parfit (1993, p. 57) calls the ‘priority view’ - give priority to the worse off
93 It is clear that both Mill and Singer believe that the valuable life lies in doing certain things; in particular doing certain things for others.
95 An instrumentalist … sees morality merely as a social phenomenon.
98 contractualism
Arneson: Humans Morally Equal
105 “Singer Problem” - moral status of a being vary from individual to individual by degree
112 Priority View - give the benefit to this worse-off person
113 egalitarian theories
118 autonomy - moral freedom
perspicuously - plain to understanding
120 to do what is right can be factored into two components, the ability to decide what is right and the ability to dispose oneself to do what one thinks is right.
123 current common-sense morality is speciesist
salutary - health giving or beneficial
salient - standing out
epistemic - relating to knowledge
Gruen: Impartial Utilitarians
129 not always motivated to follow the conclusions of rational arguments
parial considerations
132 what makes racist or sexist practices wrong is not that they are irrational or inconsistent … but that they are unfair and unjust, harmful and cruel.
134 Utilitarian theory is thought to be substatively impartial because it claims not only [greatest good for greatest number], but that the effects of any action on individuals are to be weighted impersonally. (“equal consideration of interests” ~ Singer)
135 Just as Singer’s substantive impartiality condemns granting additional consideration to the interests or preferences of one’s racial or ethnic group, so does it condemn granting additional consideration to the interest or preferences of humans over non-humans, simply because they are humans.
139 The substantive utilitarian requirement of impartiality--that is, the requirement that an agent detach him or herself from personal concern and see that concern as one among many equally s significiant concerns...would often be forced to act against the interests of a lover, friend, or family member if doing so would bring about greater good overall. [dinner restaurant example]
Impartial utilitarian morality appears to require the sacrifice of relationships and any other personal interests or concerns if, when judged from an impartial perspective, the sacrifice contributes to more overall good.
In his recent work Singer, following Hare, has suggested as much, and appears to how advocate a two-level view...in the long-run.
149 Especially considering that, “in 1995, it’s true that, in each of the past 30 years, well over 10 million children [more than 27k/day] died from readily preventable causes,” and the cost of preventing such deaths is relatively low for the everyone reading this foodnote.
McGinn: Our Duties to Animals and the Poor
150 There is, on any account, much preventable [unnecissary] suffering in the world, both animal and human.
[Syllogisms:]
Argument A
It is morally wrong to cause the suffering and death of animals unnecessarily
We do cause the suffering and death of animals unnecessarily
Therefore:
What we do to animals is morally wrong
Argument B
It is morally wrong to let people suffer and die unnecessarily
We do let people suffer and die unnecessarily
Therefore:
What we do in respect of suffering and dying people is morally wrong
151 But the force of “unnecessarily” is that thses are not actions in which the ends really justify the means, since the benefit we derive is not commensurte with the harm that is inflicted. A large evil is caused for the sake of a small good.
152 exploiting animals … animal’s life will be saed and we will have a somewhat less tasty meal … the starving child’s life will be saved while we forgo an amusing visit to the cinema.
152 The first is that it is not necessary to derive the argument from some general form of utilitarianism.
153 “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing something of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” p 177 “we ought to prevent as much suffering as we can without sacrificing something else of comparable moral importance” p 181 “Famine, Affluence and Morality”
---
Singer’s response
303 I didn't want to limit my argument to utilitarians [...] I therefore used the phrase 'comparable moral importance' rather than 'comparable suffering', in order to allow readers to judge for themselves what is of comparable moral importance."
---
154 For the principle is quite neutral as to the relative locations of the individuals involved, and Singer tells us that “we cannot discriminate against someone merely because he is far away from us” p 178 Just as we cannot discriminate on the basis of skin color or sex or species, so we cannot discriminate on the basis of geography
154 anodyne - soothing agent
155 Suppose you are a beautiful women sexually desired by many men. [...] Should you do it? Of course not: why should your your life be made into a tool for the satisfaction of other people’s desires? [...] not “your problem.” [...] prima facie [LAW: based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise] principle of action
156 important values are sacrificed to generalized altruism
157 But I see nothing in Singer’s discussion to block this kind of consequence [equalizing well-being].
158 slippery slope toward absurd levels of self-sacrifice
158 Yet we are also aware that we can do something to help the suffers.
...give up pleasures that form no part of what makes my life significant to me.
159 it is just an ad hoc rule of thumb
159 “socialism”
160 To suppose so is to succumb to sentimentality [Solomon thinks that Singer doesn’t use this enough--and that his arguent is too rational.]
contentious - state of contending
Kamm: Feminine Ethics: Distance in Morality
163 many people find meaningful lives though work and personal relations and rarely grow out of attachment to those.
militates - have an effect
maximin - the largest of a series of minima
168 a pain per se is equally bad in whichever species it occurs
169 rational agency -
wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_agent
aggregationist
oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/ac...
“total view” totalism
177 role of distance in generating or eliminating obligations
178 whether distance per se matters
In Overseas, money is a means to saving someone. In Pond, money will be lost as a consequence of wading in, which is the means to saving someone.
salience - vividness
supererogatory - not required or essential
189 intuition that nearness matters morally does not
efficacious - effective
193 the means belong to the victim
Holton and Langton: Empathy and Animal Ethics
solipsism - self is all that can be known to exist (Descartes)
wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
213 moral salience
214 psychology, knowing how it feels to be in the shoes of others
220 So far this is a matter of psychology.
shod
sanguine
coypu
parochial
requisite
229 But he is eclectic in his philosophical methodologies. [...] Alongside the endorsements of Hare lie counsels on the dangers of sentimentality and anthropomorphism.
sui generis - unique
“to indicate an idea, an entity, or a reality which cannot be reduced to a lower concept or included in a higher concept” ~ Wikipedia
Hare: Why I Am only a Demi-vegetarian
235 as a moral philosopher, I am pretty confident that the best ethical theory is a combination of Kantianism with utilitarianism (Hare 1993). [I think he’s refering to his two-level form of utilitarianism.]
ostentatiously - showy or pretentious way to impress
canvassed - to examine carefully; investigate by inquiry; discuss; debate
243 ‘specist’
Extra
Rolston III
pyrric -
249 - plants
254 - objective gestalt
259 - loci of value
a fortiori - conclusion, there is stronger evidence than previously accepted
endemic - restricted/peculiar to a region
atorium - suspension of activity
feral 1. savage 2. wild
mutatis mutandis - making necessary alterations, not affecting the main point (used when comparing two or more cases or situations)
somatically - affecting the body
Ecosystems have no “interests” … But that is to make a category mistake
265 Its esse is percipi.
Jackson: Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism - ethical sentences are not capable of truth (related to subjectivism/objectivism)
Words
39 sympathy and benevolence contrasted → self-centered existence devoted to nothing but selfish concerns
68 rarely strays more than a page without a concrete, real-life problem in his mind
151 substantial amounts of money to charities
acts and omissions are morally unacceptable
“the trill of the chase” [fishing]
175 responsible for causing their own plight
77 Instead of sympathy for someone in a plight, we supply a context … instead are failures
central moral issues of today
86 Richard Taylor’s claim that the life of Sisyphus would be imbued with meaning were he to desire to rolle stones up hills (Singer 1995a, p 196).
92 social creatures, and ethics develops as a practice among us to regulate our lives and enable the achievements of ends we hold in common (Singer 1979a, p. 209)
93 no amount of reflection will show a commitment to an ethical life to be trivial or pointless. (Singer, 1995, p. 218)
whose misfortune is greatest
imagine yourself in the place of another
impersonal perspective
independence of the personal point of view
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