Episode 208 - Transcript

So the GOAL of this episode today is to track the changes in the ethical views of the philosopher Peter Singer…throughout the different stages of his career. 

Peter singer…being a man who’s widely considered to be one of the most INFLUENTIAL philosophers talking about ethics today. He’s written books that have sold millions of copies on everything from animal rights to end of life care to effective altruism. 

But one of the most INTERESTING things about Peter Singer as an ethical philosopher… is just how much his views have CHANGED over the years. 

What I mean is: at the BEGINNING of his career…Peter Singer was somebody who DIDN’T believe in moral facts, morality was the kind of THING to him where it couldn’t POSSIBLY be true or false no matter HOW hard you tried. Whereas THESE days… as a 78 year old man after 50 YEARS of thinking and writing about this kind of stuff…he’s gotten to a place TODAY where he thinks that morality…is actually something that is OBJECTIVELY true. 

Now HOW did that whole transformation take place? Today’s episode is the STORY of it…and by the END of this story hopefully along the way I’m gonna do my best to do three things. One: the STORY of his moral evolution will be a GREAT excuse for us to talk about several different IMPORTANT, MODERN ETHICAL approaches that people are holding these days: it’ll allow you to see if ANY of these align with YOUR particular views on this stuff. 

SECOND thing is: I hope by TALKING about the different types of metaethics and normative ethics and how they combine together to make UP an approach to morality…my HOPE is that it’ll allow you to have a frame of reference to understand your OWN ethical evolution better, WHATEVER that looks like in your case. 

And the LAST thing I hope this episode can do: is to serve as an inspiration…for anybody out there who is TRULY curious about knowing this world around them. People that want to HONOR… this world they live in, the TRUE complexity of it. The type of person whose set of beliefs is NOT just some extension of their own ego, something they have to just win a debate…if you’re NOT a sophist in other words…but instead someone who is TRULY seeking a better understanding of the world…then the life of Peter Singer is the story of a man who is NOT scared to change his mind, no matter HOW long he’s held a position…and it’s the story of someone who is not scared to HOLD a position, if it’s the one he thinks is worth defending. 

It’s a level of maturity…that we could DEFINITELY use MORE of in this world we’re living in.

Cause I mean ALONG the lines of the SOLUTIONS we’ve been talking about LATELY on this podcast…and these philosophers that aren’t CALLING for a total revolution of the system, but think there’s HOPE from within the system we HAVE…Peter Singer represents a philosopher that has dedicated his LIFE…to RAISING people’s AWARENESS of these ethical issues…and then giving people practical ways of ENGAGING with them on the other side of it.  

So maybe ONE way to look at all this is that if the world is in need of a transformation…then maybe ONE perspective is that part of that transformation, STARTS, with people understanding their ethical decision making at a whole different level; that the FIRST step in changing things is maybe…to know thyself. 

So on THAT note I’m just gonna get started: this STORY we’re talking about BEGINS…with Peter Singer when he’s a graduate student at Oxford all the way back in 1969. 

And it’s IMPORTANT to note… just because this is the BEGINNING of the story…that by THIS point in his life: Peter Singer is not a baby at this kind of stuff. To be FAIR: he had ALREADY put MORE thinking into his ethics, and the rationality of his moral choices…than MOST people probably do in their entire LIVES. 

And I mean it’s not like he’s a HERO or something for DOING it…he HAD to think about this stuff or he would’ve got cut from the school, who wants to be living with your PARENTS mowing their lawn until you’re 50? But anyway the POINT is… that ALREADY HERE at the BEGINNING of our STORY…Peter Singer is holding what would be to MANY people…a pretty sophisticated set of ethical positions: he is what is KNOWN at the time…as an Emotivist Hedonistic Utilitarian. 

And I get it: LOT of philosophical lingo to throw your way without an explanation there…as we DO on this show we’re going to break these terms down one by one and what is meant by them…again HOPEFULLY shedding some light on how your OWN views plug into all this. 

And the FIRST thing I want to do in the INTEREST of breaking them down is separating them into two distinct parts. So for the title: Emotivist Hedonistic Utilitarian. Think of Hedonistic Utilitarian…as Peter Singer’s NORMATIVE ethical position, that is the criteria he uses to determine which THINGS are good or bad and WHY they’re good or bad. 

And think of EMOTIVIST…as Peter Singer’s METAETHICAL position (it’s called), or the part of Peter Singer’s ethics that describes the DETAILS… of what he thinks we’re even DOING when we TALK about moral claims whatsoever.

Because it’s his METAETHICAL position…and YOUR metaethical position for that matter…that will CHANGE the implications of EVERYTHING that goes on in this OTHER space, of your NORMATIVE ethical position.

To explain WHY metaethics is so important…and SPECIFICALLY why Peter Singer is this “EMOTIVIST” kind of thing in the first place…I think it’s worth doing a quick recap of one of the important insights from the work of the philosopher David Hume– which we talked about more in the SERIES we did on him, but it sets up this conversation here today. 

If you remember: one of Hume’s big points is responding to a really common way that people think about morality…that HE thinks is fundamentally wrong. 

LOT of people if you were to ask them: why is murder wrong? Something like that…they’d respond back with something like well, murder is wrong…because there’s a lot of good REASONS I can cite that MAKE it something that’s wrong. For example, people have a RIGHT to their own bodily autonomy, murder takes AWAY that autonomy, therefore murder is wrong.

But what David Hume might ask BACK to this kind of person: he’d ask is murder wrong… because there is an objective moral fact of the universe that murder’s wrong and then these REASONS you’ve just given me have UNCOVERED that fact. Or IS what makes something seem wrong to you…that you FEEL that it is wrong in the FIRST place…and then these REASONS…are ARGUMENTS you’ve come up with AFTER the fact, to JUSTIFY why it’s wrong to you?

This is a subtle change… that has RADICAL consequences. To David Hume: moral judgements…are FUNDAMENTALLY MADE at the level of feeling or preference…NOT because of some reasonable argument you have about them. 

And don’t get him wrong: reason, to Hume…is absolutely important. It is a set of tools to gather new information, refine your ethical views, work out contradictions in the ways you’re looking at things. Reason is MASSIVELY important to the process of ethical development, no doubt about it. But it’s not REASON…or the FACTS of the world…that MAKES something good or bad. It’s the way you FEEL about it. 

The DEEPEST moral conviction that you have…is really just the moral PREFERENCE that you’re aligned with right now…that you then USE REASON to organize and defend.

Or as David Hume famously put it: reason… is and ought to be the slave of the passions. 

ALL of this leading to the position that there ARE no objective moral FACTS to the universe…there are just different degrees of REFINEMENT… to people’s moral preferences. 

Now this WHOLE IDEA from David Hume…gives rise to a branch of ethics called Moral antirealism…where the belief begins at this POINT: that there ARE no moral facts to the universe. 

But one of the FIRST QUESTIONS you gotta ANSWER if you’re a moral antirealist, or Peter Singer VERY early on in his career…is if there are no moral FACTS our feelings about things are POINTING towards…then WHY does it SEEM to us, to be SO CLEAR…that there ARE moral positions that are just objectively better or worse than others?

Like WHY does it seem so obvious that there’s SOME kind of moral difference…between a Nazi…and YOU. Why does it seem OBVIOUS that spending your life counting blades of grass in a field with absolutely zero purpose to doing ANY of it…SEEMS objectively WORSE than living a life doing things that you CARE about. These don’t SEEM like just subjective PREFERENCES that we’re talking about. 

And to answer THAT question you’re going to need to turn to meta ethics. 

And as you can imagine there’s a MILLION different ANSWERS that someone could GIVE to that kind of question, but one of the most COMMON ones you’ll run INTO in modern ethical discussions…is SOME VERSION of what’s called noncognitivism. Think of noncognitivism as a branch of metaethics, WITHIN moral antirealism…where the ANSWER to this problem of WHY moral questions SEEM to HAVE such FACTUAL answers to them despite there being no moral facts…comes down to the SPECIFIC LANGUAGE we USE…when we TALK about morality. 

Let me explain where they’re coming from with some examples. There’s a LOT of different kinds of STATEMENTS someone can MAKE when they choose to make those various NOISES that comes out of their mouth. And when noncognitivist philosophers PAY ATTENTION to the different KINDS of statements people make…they notice that MORAL statements…turn out to be a VERY DIFFERENT kind of THING than a FACTUAL statement about reality. Despite them often LOOKING to us on the SURFACE…like they’re very similar things. 

For example…I can make a DESCRIPTIVE statement about some state of affairs in the world…I can say something like: the door is shut. 

And the POINT is: when I SAY the door is SHUT. I’m SAYING something there…that can HAVE truth content. Meaning, the door can EITHER be shut or not. A statement like the door is shut can potentially be PROVEN true or false. It is a descriptive statement. 

But if I said ANOTHER kind of statement: this time I say…shut the door. That is what a noncognitivist would call an IMPERATIVE statement. Which is a TOTALLY different thing that doesn’t HAVE truth content. 

Meaning when I say shut the door…there’s nothing about that KIND of statement that can be proven true or false. I mean if I sat here trying to PROVE to you, you know, shut the door…you’d look at me like I was insane. And for good reason. Imperative statements have no truth content. 

But then BEYOND IMPERATIVE statements… there’s ANOTHER kind of statement a noncognitivist says we make: and THAT is an EMOTIVE statement. An example of THIS would be something like: open doors…are for LOSERS. Now THAT kind of statement… just sounds a LOT like a personal PREFERENCE. An OPINION. Again, it’s NOT really something you could SAY has content that can be PROVEN true or FALSE… it’s just a different KIND of statement altogether.

Now the QUESTION for a noncognitivist is this: where do MORAL statements fit into this whole picture? When I say something like… stealing is bad:

Is that a DESCRIPTIVE statement? Well no it CAN’T be THAT, because noncognitivists believe there are no moral facts. Is it an IMPERATIVE statement? A command like shut the door? Well some noncognitivists THINK so and we’ll get into that in a second. But if you HAVEN’T already guessed: THIS is where we ARRIVE…at the EMOTIVIST position of Peter Singer at the BEGINNING of his graduate years at Oxford. When Peter Singer says he is an EMOTIVIST…what he means is that MORAL STATEMENTS like saying stealing is bad…is REALLY just an EMOTIVE statement… where we’re SIMPLY expressing a preference or a taste, and nothing MORE. 

To say stealing is bad, despite the fact it CAN LOOK a lot LIKE a DESCRIPTIVE statement on the surface…in terms of the actual content of what you’re UTTERING there…stealing is bad, is REALLY just the EQUIVALENT of saying Booo! Stealing! Freaking boooo stealing you suck! 

Meaning: there’s no truth claim you’re making there . There’s no command it’s making. To a CERTAIN KIND of EMOTIVIST…early ON in Emotivism: a MORAL statement is just an expression of a preference, that AT BOTTOM is NOT too far off the level of you saying Yay chocolate ice cream! My favorite!

Now just to be clear here: Emotivism QUICKLY evolves into MORE than this involving IMPERATIVE statements as well. And NONE of this is saying that to an emotivist morality isn’t important…you know, BECAUSE it’s just people’s preferences. 

No, in fact in MY experience: emotivists are often people… that think we need to be talking about our moral preferences MORE than we already do, I mean if you believe that morality is just a matter of people’s preferences…then maybe that’s something you think can be a bit fickle at times, maybe it’s something we need to stay on TOP of. 

So NOBODY’S saying that an emotivist doesn’t care about morality, and just to be DOUBLY CLEAR here: Emotivism… is NOT saying ANYTHING yet…about what is specifically good or bad. Emotivism is JUST a theory about moral language and what we’re DOING when we TALK about whether things are good or bad, it is Peter Singer’s METAETHICAL position…that will go on to have effects on his NORMATIVE ethical views at this point in his career. 

Which…if you remember, his NORMATIVE ethical position…was that he is a Hedonistic Utilitarian. Now what does THAT mean so we can TIE all this together?

Hedonistic utilitarianism, in the most ENTRY LEVEL WAY you could TALK about it, is the belief that the RIGHT thing to do in a given situation…is whatever maximizes the PLEASURE, and the minimizes PAIN for the greatest number of people that are being AFFECTED by it. Pain and PLEASURE… being the Hedonistic side of it…MAXIMIZING something impartially… being the Utilitarian side of it.

So for something like the trolley car problem, just to ILLUSTRATE this…if you were to pull the lever, and choose to kill the one person to save the five…that’s the CLASSIC EXAMPLE… where this COULD be someone using… a hedonistic utilitarian style of ethical reasoning…to DECIDE what the right thing to DO is, after all it could be argued by them: you’re trading ONE person’s life, for the sake of FIVE people’s lives. That’s a UTILITARIAN style of calculation.

So now that we’ve traced… AS BASIC a picture as we can of what an Emotivist Hedonistic Utilitarian is…it’s time to start talking about the PROBLEMS in these individual positions that lead Peter Singer to CHANGE his ethical views over the years. It’s ALSO time to start talking about Utilitarianism in the level of depth that it deserves. TIRED of this trolley problem level of understanding. 

See because as a Graduate student…while these are CERTAINLY the positions he believes in at the time…and while there’s GOOD reasons to believe them…with EACH ONE of these… he has this THING, in the BACK of his mind at the time, eating at him where something… just DOESN’T seem quite COMPLETE, ABOUT these as ethical positions. 

You can PROBABLY relate to this: ANY position you hold as a person that you’re not absolutely CERTAIN of, ANY position you haven’t just DECIDED that you believe in it, and now it’s time to DEFEND it…it’s not like there’s a point in life that you CAN’T find any potential issues with your positions…it’s just the set of things I’m arguing for the time being in the interest of moving a bit closer to the truth. 

So let’s go THROUGH Peter SINGER’S at this early stage of his career.

When it comes to the Emotivism side of things…while EXPANDING his understanding of Emotivism…hist views EVENTUALLY evolve into something else. 

INFLUENCED by the work of C.L. Stevenson and MANY OTHERS in this area…I mean, it SEEMS like a pretty compelling argument…that moral claims are expressions of emotions.

But one thing that DOESN’T seem right to Peter Singer is…is this ALL…that moral claims are? Like are all moral claims…JUST expressions of emotions on the level of your love for chocolate ice cream over vanilla? Maybe a light persuasion to get people to come over to team triple fudge chocolate with you?

I mean, this just SEEMS to be incomplete at some level…if you wanted a full DESCRIPTION of what moral talk really IS among people. The Nazi example…the counting blades of grass example…COULD IT BE, to Peter Singer, and the emotivists that came before him…that WHEN I say murder is wrong…it’s NOT MERELY an expression of a preference or taste…murder is wrong… is fundamentally “action-guiding” as it’s called. Meaning built IN to EVERY moral statement…is the unspoken IMPERATIVE…that YOU should follow my moral advice.

In other words: part of saying murder is wrong…is NOT ONLY that I think you should ALSO think murder is wrong, but more IMPORTANTLY what I’m saying there is: DO NOT MURDER. In other words: It is ACTION GUIDING, when I say it. And that to try to separate THAT imperative…from what a moral statement IS DOING…misses something IMPORTANT about moral statements. 

So maybe the more ACCURATE way of thinking about them…is that MORAL statements…are actually IMPERATIVE statements…where thinking BACK to our examples from before…these would be statements that are MORE similar to the imperative “shut the door”...than they are to the EMOTIVE statement…”open doors are for LOSERS”.

To Singer…this line of thinking is STARTING to get CLOSER… to what our EXPERIENCE is OF moral arguments. This STILL makes him a non-cognitivist…there still ARE no moral FACTS to Peter Singer. But to him: the reality of our situation is that people are NOT just sitting around ARGUING…over what kind of ICE cream flavor they like more. This isn’t the level of urgency we feel about it, this isn’t the FLAVOR… of these conversations when we’re IN them. 

So by acknowledging the action guiding nature of moral statements…this is a GREAT THING, for Singer because it starts to give us more room…for being able to ARGUE…for CERTAIN moral positions over OTHERS… USING this capacity to REASON that we have. Rationality can now play a bigger role.

Because think about it: if somebody has a preference…like I love chocolate ice cream. You can’t really make an argument for why that PREFERENCE of theirs is irrational. But if somebody tells you to shut the door…that MAY NOT be the kind of statement that can be PROVED by rational argument or facts…but it IS a kind of statement that can be SUPPORTED by rational argument and facts. I can all of a sudden give you REASONS…for WHY it is better to shut the door.  

All of a sudden the NAZI example and the blades of GRASS example…don’t seem to HOLD UP so well when it’s not MERELY a preference, and for Peter Singer… that SEEMS to correspond better he thinks, with our REALITY. 

So this SEED of DOUBT is planted in his head…he’s STILL an emotivist for now…but AS this seed of doubt is planted, and he’s moving MORE in the direction of rationality playing a bigger ROLE in all this…this SHIFT in his METAETHICS…is going on at the SAME EXACT time that he’s starting to question the NORMATIVE ethical side of things as well…in his hedonistic utilitarianism. 

Turns out THAT starts to look to him like it has some considerable problems with it too that need to be looked at. 

And he says one of the EXAMPLES that really made him REALIZE this… DURING this period in his life…was a thought experiment put out by the Philosopher Robert Nozick…in his FAMOUS book called Anarchy, State and Utopia. 

Which we’ve done an episode on here before. The thought experiment was called: the EXPERIENCE machine. And if you’re a HEDONISTIC UTILITARIAN that’s never HEARD it before…it’s one that REALLY forces you to THINK about your limitations when it comes to hedonism. 

Nozick makes the argument in the book: if the UNDENIABLE, BEST THING we should be doing MORALLY…is MAXIMIZING PLEASURE and MINIMIZING PAIN…then hypothetically…if there was a MACHINE that we could HOOK people up to and from here on out it would alter the LIMBIC system of their brain and all they would EVER EXPERIENCE was PLEASURE…in the MAXIMUM dose POSSIBLE. 

Should we be FORCING people…to get HOOKED UP…to these types of machines? 

Another interesting LAYER to this thought experiment…is IF this kind of machine REALLY EXISTED…do you think people would CHOOSE…to be HOOKED UP to that kind of machine voluntarily? 

Well no doubt SOME people would. But Nozick thinks MOST people…wouldn’t. And why? Because to Nozick: there’s something to be said for being able to live in the REAL world and have GENUINE experiences… even if they sometimes COME with a certain level of pain, and struggle. Robert Nozick says that MOST people if you REALLY PRESSED them on it…value things like authenticity, personal freedom, the ability to live a life that ISN’T being artificially manipulated–they VALUE THIS stuff FAR MORE than they value just FEELING GOOD all the time or never feeling any PAIN. 

So for Peter Singer…this makes him take a step back, consider his moral outlook more…I mean at this point in his career, he ALREADY was having some DOUBTS about hedonistic utilitarianism…because he thought it sometimes LEADS to these conclusions… that SEEM to him to be a little… paternalistic. 

Reason he THOUGHT this was because, for example, if you’re ALWAYS TRYING to maximize pleasure and minimize pain…sometimes the solutions you arrive at involve TELLING people how to live their lives. You can imagine policies coming down from on high… where there is a ban on sugary drinks…or the prohibition of a substance…or vaccine mandates…ALL of these are things that can be theoretically justified under the banner of hedonistic utilitarianism…but again these are THINGS that SEEM to Peter Singer to be a BIT too paternalistic. 

But he thinks REGARDLESS of these problems: maybe we don’t gotta throw EVERYTHING out here. Because maybe the PROBLEM…lies more in the HEDONISTIC side of all this. 

In other words: if what is meant by Utilitarianism is often that we’re going to MAXIMIZE for some specific CONSEQUENCE or SET of consequences in the world…then maybe what needs to CHANGE…is just what we’re MAXIMIZING for. And in LIGHT of these concerns that Nozick and OTHERS have brought up…maybe the BETTER thing to be maximizing for…are people’s individual PREFERENCES. 

And this is gonna be the transition…of Peter Singer from an Emotivist Hedonistic Utilitarian. To now a PRESCRIPTIVIST, PREFERENCE Utilitarian. Again, STILL a Utilitarian…but NOW… we’re going to MAXIMIZE for the satisfaction of people’s preferences…and we’re going to MINIMIZE the amount that people’s preferences are NOT satisfied. 

This SEEMS like a better moral theory to him at the TIME…because look: if the reason you were a hedonistic utilitarian in the FIRST place is because you wanted to increase well being and decrease suffering in the world…well then people’s PREFERENCES, it turns out…often INVOLVE them wanting greater levels of well being…and LOWER levels of suffering. The THINKING is: MAXIMIZE people’s preferences…and you’ll LIKELY be maximizing their well being. 

Now the OTHER change you no doubt noticed there when I said it…was the transition in his METAETHICS from being an Emotivist…to a Prescriptivist. Let’s talk about THAT. 

Peter Singer’s VIEWS during this period are VERY closely aligned with an absolutely LEGENDARY philosopher he’s working alongside at Oxford at the time…a guy named R.M. Hare. Hare was ALSO a prescriptivist, preference utilitarian. And he was THE GUY to POPULARIZE a lot of thinkers moving from these EARLIER forms of Emotivism…to a NEW idea in the 50’s… that he was NOW calling PRESCRIPTIVISM. 

To put it briefly: to Hare…he didn’t like…what he called the “irrationality” of the earlier emotivists…in the sense that these were people to him that DENIED…the ability for rationality…to play a greater ROLE in determining what a VALID moral statement WAS. 

He CERTAINLY would disagree with the idea that counting blades of GRASS is just a good a life as any other…and would think that any metaethical theory that can’t ACCOUNT for that obvious fact… is NEEDLESSLY irrational. 

As HE said: “my main task was to find a rationalist kind of non-descriptivism, and this led me to establish that imperatives, the simplest kinds of prescriptions, could be subject to logical constraints while not [being] descriptive.”

To R.M Hare…moral statements like stealing is wrong. This is not a preference. This is not a form of MILD persuasion. This is a prescription, for ourselves and for other people. For Hare…that is the true CONTENT of this moral language, again despite how it may look to people on the surface. 

MORE than that for him: because of the prescriptive nature OF these moral statements…in order to be logically consistent…ANYONE who makes a moral judgment to Hare, HAS to be committed to the SAME moral judgment… in any situation with the same facts at hand, or as Peter Singer gives as an example: If I want to take the position that it’s okay for you to be my slave. Then I need to ALSO think its okay…for me to be a slave myself. You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the others AFFECTED by your actions…and ASK yourself if you can still accept it.

Or as Peter Singer says summarizing the views of the later work of R.M. Hare, “To make a moral judgment I must put myself in the position of all those affected by it, and take on their preferences. Thus universal prescriptivism leads to preference utilitarianism.” 

But did you SEE the move that he just MADE there? To Peter Singer: IF you accept Hare’s argument that moral statements are universal prescriptions like this…then it REQUIRES you to BE someone who is committed to maximizing the PREFERENCES of all parties involved. Which would then MAKE you by default…a Prescriptivist Preference Utilitarian. 

For Peter Singer this was huge. This SEEMS to solve the problem with the Experience machine of Nozick. And I mean by THIS point in his career Singer had already started considering animal rights and thought that this constraint of moral language needing to be universal…made it ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for us to be considering the experiences NOT ONLY of other human beings, but of all sentient creatures in general. 

ANOTHER thing this universalizability ALSO accomplished for him…was that it SEEMED to give a foundation, ROOTED in LOGIC…that making IMPARTIAL decisions, not favoring one person over another… IMPARTIAL decisions were a CRUCIAL PIECE of sound moral reasoning. And Peter Singer…REMAINED a preference utilitarian throughout MOST of his career…that is: UNTIL just a few years ago, when he underwent yet ANOTHER massive change in his thinking.

It should be said: SIMILAR to when he was an emotivist or a hedonist…it’s NOT LIKE Peter Singer couldn’t POSSIBLY find any PROBLEMS with prescriptivism or preference utilitarianism. Again he was just HOLDING a viewpoint, that seemed DIFFICULT for him to DENY at the time, and he was paying AS MUCH RESPECT to it as he COULD…in the ethical conversations that were going on. Well, the SAME THING is about to happen AGAIN to him in our story. 

Peter Singer was friends and colleagues with a philosopher named Derek Parfit. Now Derek Parfit…was an interesting fellow, god rest his soul…because HE DECIDED that part of his LIFE’S MISSION when he was on this planet…was GOING to be to PROVE the EXISTENCE…of objective morality. He was going to engage with EVERY argument against it, EVERY position…and he was going to write a book making his CASE for it…the book is called On What Matters published in 2011.

Now Peter Singer…was an EXTREMELY lucky GUY at the time…because he was one of the FEW people that Parfit asked to READ his book BEFORE hand…and to give him NOTES on how to make it better. And as Peter Singer READS the arguments presented in the book…he FINDS himself being more and more convinced of them the more that he reads it.

Many of these were arguments that Singer had already heard before throughout his career…critiques of preference utilitarianism and prescriptivism…but Parfit just PUTS them in a way that is undeniably brilliant, to Singer. 

For example if you said that the best moral choice lies in MAXIMIZING someone’s preferences…CONSIDER Derek Parfit’s thought experiment of the Altruistic Drug Dealer. 

Imagine there’s a drug dealer…they CREATE a drug, GET someone addicted to it, and they have an UNLIMITED SUPPLY of this drug and they will ALWAYS, HAPPILY give more of the drug to the person who is now addicted. Parfit says: well as long as that person is addicted…they would ALWAYS have a preference…to get more of the drug. But would it actually be MORALLY BETTER for them…to always GET more of the drug? For what it's worth consider the parallel here between chemical drugs…and things like social media. 

CLEARLY this would NOT be in the best interest of the person who is addicted to it…and YET it would ALWAYS be SATISFYING their PREFERENCES. Interesting to consider alongside preference utilitarianism. Now to pile ON to this point and give Parfit’s wider critique a little more SHAPE…consider ANOTHER thought experiment of his: the Random Tuesday thought experiment.

He says imagine there’s a person…and in GENERAL this person wants to avoid pain overall…but for SOME REASON…they have a very specific, PARTICULAR desire to avoid pain on random Tuesdays going into the future. Now, this person has no particular reason to FEAR pain on those days any more than any OTHER day. But nonetheless…this is their PREFERENCE…to ESPECIALLY avoid pain on random Tuesdays. 

Parfit’s question is: DOES the satisfaction of that desire…MAKE this person better off? If you’re a preference utilitarian…satisfying preferences is what brings about a better world. And yet when it comes to THIS one…it doesn’t seem to change ANYTHING for the better. 

The POINT for him…is that not everyone’s PREFERENCES…are EQUALLY worth trying to maximize. For example: do I have a moral obligation to maximize the preferences of people who are COMPLETELY irrational? Or misinformed? How about people who are EXTREMELY angry, and acting in a rash way? How about people that are not in good mental health and they have a preference they wouldn’t otherwise HAVE if they were feeling better? As Peter Singer points out…if you found a Roman Tomb from a couple thousand years ago and on the wall the dead person wrote: in death…my preference… is to have a candle burning at my side for all eternity. Is that a PREFERENCE…that we honor? 

What Peter Singer starts to REALIZE is that preference utilitarianism…SMUGGLES IN…a lot of assumptions about the MINDSET of the people whose preferences we need to honor. Usually the assumption is that someone needs to be calm, well informed and rational. 

But when he’s reading the work of ANOTHER philosopher who we’ll talk about here in a second…he starts to notice a deep FLAW in the premise of preference utilitarianism altogether. If preferences need to be RATIONAL in order to be something worth maximizing. Then this philosopher he’s reading says: what if the RATIONAL set of PREFERENCES that people end up ARRIVING at…starts to look a LOT like MAXIMIZING well being…and minimizing suffering? In other words: if you REFLECTED on the nature of rationality and on the moral concepts THEMSELVES and eventually ARRIVED at a conclusion that looked a LOT LIKE hedonistic utilitarianism…if RATIONAL preferences are just hedonistic ones…then the ENTIRE position, of PREFERENCE utilitarianism… would just consume itself…it would become unnecessary. 

And the philosopher he’s READING when he comes ACROSS this argument written all the way back in the 1800’s…is a guy by the name of Henry Sidgwick. 

Sidgwick was a classical, utilitarian philosopher. I mean you think of classical utilitarians you think of people like John Stuart Mill you think of Bentham. But to Peter Singer…you can’t SLEEP on Sidgwick just because he’s lesser known than these other two. 

In HIS opinion…Sidgwick’s work is the BEST of ALL of them. He says his engagement with the arguments against him is so extensive…that he almost starts to look like a MODERN day philosopher. 

So it’s AROUND the year 2013 when Singer is writing a book with his philosophical counterpart in Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek…the TWO of them are WORKING on a book where they are 1. trying to bring a greater level of AWARENESS to the work of Henry Sidgwick…and 2. They’re trying to critique and defend his ideas and see to what extent they hold up to philosophical scrutiny. 

And it’s when Peter Singer’s DOING this DEEP DIVE on Sidgwick’s work…that the possibility of objective morality…STARTS to become MORE plausible to him…than he had EVER really CONSIDERED before in his entire life. I mean remember this is a man who has spent his CAREER as a noncognitivist, not BELIEVING in moral facts. And here he is facing arguments from Sidgwick…that ALONG with the points he’s considering from Derek Parfit: hit him with a type of force that gets him to question ALL of it. 

He is actually on the verge here of going from an Emotivist, to a Prescriptivist to an OBJECTIVIST metaethics…all in the course of one lifetime. So what WERE these ARGUMENTS that he heard from Sidgwick?

Well the first thing that needs to be said– a MISTAKE to avoid when HEARING this…is don’t confuse someone saying they believe in OBJECTIVE morality…with them being CERTAIN about their position. 

I mean at first glance it can SEEM like that HAS to go along with it…and dare I say MOST versions of objective morality that you will HEAR about…will be someone that appeals to a God that GUARANTEES that objective morality. And dare I say MOST of those PEOPLE in practice…need THEIR god to be THE god that guarantees it, so the picture of WHAT that objective morality is gonna look like… USUALLY is a very SPECIFIC thing for them. 

But Peter Singer is NOT religious. Does NOT believe in god. And he’d be the FIRST to say that he is not CERTAIN about his objectivism. He’d absolutely welcome ANYONE to critique his set of positions; that’s what moral progress takes. And that MUCH LIKE all the OTHER positions he’s held throughout his career that we’ve talked about on this episode…this objectivism, just represents the BEST position he’s come across so far, that he has a very difficult time DENYING, and he’s chosen to ARGUE on behalf of this position because one that’s worth DEFENDING. In other words: he is a philosopher…and he’s gonna DEFEND the best position he knows. 

Now another common mistake to avoid when you HEAR the words objective morality…is to assume that what that MEANS is that I have an ENTIRE BOOK of things I’ve written on the whole way you should approach EVERY aspect of your life, and it’s OBJECTIVE!

No, the TYPE of objective morality that Singer is advocating for is much less… ambitious. It is not one where there are these objective values FLOATING around in the universe somewhere…that is the wrong way to be THINKING about it he says. The better way to think of it…is that it is a set of rational AXIOMS…that are SIMILAR to the axioms of mathematics. 

To Peter singer: obviously there are objective truths that are possible in things like logic and mathematics. One plus one equals two, is just true. 

To deny that fact…is to have a misunderstanding of the concepts that are being discussed there. MORE than that though: it’s important to remember…that one plus one equals two…does not require you to empirically verify it, in ORDER for it to be true…you don’t NEED to get one rock and add it to another rock and SEE two rocks literally with your senses, for one plus one to equal two. You can get there SIMPLY by rationally analyzing the concepts themselves. 

Well in the SAME way it requires the existence of some sort of being… where once it reaches a capacity… to ARRIVE at these sorts of mathematical truths, and then if directed properly, will MOVE in the DIRECTION of these truths. What if the SAME thing is true for axioms of value, derived by using nothing but REASON as well? 

Well here’s one of the FIRST things he might say in regards to this: IF THAT WAS possible…there’s NO guarantee that an axiom that was derived like this would be useful for human society in any way. The question here is NOT… is there an objective morality we can arrive at that would appeal to Homo sapiens and the kinds of values they’ve evolved to prioritize. 

But nonetheless if there was even ONE of these objective rational axioms that we could arrive at, that pointed to the existence of objective morality…then, I don’t know…seems like something that you’d wanna know about. Like it would have pretty RADICAL implications if that WAS a thing. 

So what WOULD these axioms look like if they DID exist? Well interestingly, for Peter Singer, probably BECAUSE we’re in part rational beings that try to rationally organize our lives…these axioms DO end up being things that may be useful to us… in certain cases. He gives three examples all first proposed in the work of Henry Sidgwick.

The FIRST of these he says is that: there’s no reason for preferring one moment of our existence to another…in and of itself. What is meant by this in practice Peter Singer thinks: is that it can be SO easy for us to discount the future for the sake of enjoying the present. 

But if you were to look back at history…and ALL the different moments that have ever occurred…are ANY of these moments…more or less important than this one right now? Is the FUTURE going to be any LESS important than this moment right here? This temporal neutrality…is for Peter Singer the type of ethical principle that may be able to be derived from rational reflection. 

The second axiom from Sidgwick he says: is if something is right for someone in a particular situation…then that thing is right, INDEPENDENT of the IDENTITY of the people involved in the situation. Meaning it doesn’t matter if its your biggest enemy, or your MOM or the next door neighbor’s dog…a purely rational ethics would PRESUME…impartiality.

And along those SAME lines: the THIRD axiom he gives…is that the interests of ONE individual…are no more important than the interests of another. 

Now if ANY of these three SEEM to you to be very easily denied the second that you hear them…I think Peter Singer would say really try to reflect on them and give them a fair chance. He obviously understands we’re living during a time not FAR away from logical positivism and seeing metaphysics as unverifiable speculation. He ALSO obviously understands that if somebody’s committed enough: absolute skepticism is something that you can apply at any MOMENT…and in THAT case how can we even know if we EXIST. 

I think the ask for Peter Singer would be that we’re AT LEAST trying to have a good faith conversation. And he thinks if you REFLECT on these axioms closely…they become VERY difficult to DENY from a rationalist perspective. 

Something to notice about them TOO is that…in a LOT of cases where people claim to have access to an objective form of morality…often times that’s people trying to universalize a PARTICULAR type of subjective experience and then call it objective. Whereas with THESE three axioms…as unambitious as they are…it’s ALMOST like they’re trying to REMOVE subjective bias from the equation and move more towards being IMPARTIAL.

And NO DOUBT, Peter Singer would say a LOT MORE WORK needs to be DONE in this area…but you could DO WORSE than STARTING with these three axioms from Henry Sidgwick. The DEEPER question to consider here is: in the SAME WAY…people have wondered if we came in contact with an alien species from a different galaxy…and people have asked: WOULD that alien species have arrived at SIMILAR mathematical axioms because they would have made THEIR mathematics to correspond with the RATIONAL structure of reality. Are there rational axioms of value…that ANY BEING with sufficient rational capability and free time…might arrive at no matter WHAT their evolutionary history is?

Because for Peter Singer…take any ONE of these three axioms…take the one that says that no individual's interests are more important than the interests of another. That at it’s CORE…is NOT something that evolution and survival would lead us to VALUE. And YET, he says, across THOUSANDS of YEARS, IN COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CULTURES, thinkers from all DIFFERENT traditions have arrived at a similar sort of moral truth. Does that in ANY way peak your INTEREST…that this may actually just be a truth of reason, derived from REFLECTING on the concepts themselves, on the level of a one plus one equals two. 

In fact: there’s actually a LOT of moral insight you can GET for Peter Singer…simply by rationally analyzing moral concepts. And this is gonna lead to an EXPANSION in his views of WHAT he thinks may constitute what an objective moral FACT may be. 

What I mean is: he’s obviously not just DONE with all things MORALITY because he’s discovered these axioms that are interesting. And as you can understand: BEING somebody who now BELIEVES in the possibility of objective morality…he’s gonna be somebody LOOKING for it in a more APPLIED ethics space as well. To him: there’s a whole new potential WORLD out there of Objective Ethics…that he’s never really spent much effort exploring the boundaries of. 

And the way to DO that he thinks…is to be THINKING about these moral concepts, very CAREFULLY. 

Following the work of Derek Parfit…I think Peter Singer would be OPEN to the exercise of rationally EXAMINING the concept of something like SUFFERING, for example. Meaning if we’re going to do that: let’s get ANY, SPECIFIC, EMPIRICAL EXAMPLES of suffering OUT of your head for a second…and let’s just try to REFLECT on SUFFERING…as a concept. 

Well BUILT IN to the concept of SUFFERING he might say…is that it is an undesirable STATE for a conscious being to experience. 

Conscious beings EXIST in the universe. Fact. SUFFERING is a TYPE of experience they can have. Fact. And suffering, as a concept, IMPLIES that a conscious being WOULDN’T want to BE in it…or else it wouldn’t in fact BE…true SUFFERING. 

In other words: this is NOT a subjective PREFERENCE that suffering is bad…this is not a CULTURAL viewpoint. This doesn’t RELY on specific EXAMPLES of suffering you can point to in the world around you. 

This is a rational INSIGHT, it’s A priori. Suffering is DISTINCT… as a THING… BECAUSE of its undesirability. 

Ay but let’s be CAREFUL…NOTICE HOW CLOSE we’re GETTING there…to deriving NORMATIVE VALUES…that seem to be BUILT IN in some way…to a purely DESCRIPTIVE state of affairs! But wait…that would be directly against Hume’s is/ought distinction, and the idea from Hume that Peter Singer BEGAN his career with…that what MAKES something good or bad is how we FEEL about it, and REASON is just there to justify it and think clearly.

But if CAREFUL, RATIONAL reflection of what concepts ARE… can HEAVILY IMPLY what you to what you OUGHT to do, it’s not that Parfit or Singer think this REFUTES Hume’s is/ought distinction outright, but it DEFINITELY they think…calls into QUESTION how CLEAR CUT that divide really IS between is and ought. We could do an entire episode on Derek Parfit and go into it deeper if people asked for it, but to Peter Singer the TAKEAWAY is: 

When you reflect…on what suffering or well-being even is…you realize that it is self-evident that we should be promoting well being and reducing suffering. This to him is a basic, self-evident fact that is maybe on the level of the self-evidence… of the rational coherence of the universe, or the continuity of existence from moment to moment. Meaning it’s not that you CAN’T question WHY things are rationally coherent, WHY does 1+1=2. It’s just that at a certain point, even if you don’t HAVE answers as to why it’s that way…with something like rational coherence all you can really do is just POINT at it and say I believe it because, well LOOK. It’s SELF EVIDENT that rationality is rational. 

So after this DECADES long JOURNEY out of Peter Singer…the position he’s holding for NOW, if we HAD to give a name to it. Would be ALONG the lines of the views of Henry Sidgwick…you could call him an Objectivist Hedonistic Utilitarian. Moving BACK to HEDONISTIC Utilitarian… after PREFERENCE Utilitarianism collapses for him. Or as Sidgwick describes the position in HIS work, its a quote that Peter Singer likes to use to DESCRIBE what the GOALS are of his moral outlook…he says aiming for: 

“Universal happiness, desirable consciousness or feeling for the innumerable multitude of sentient beings, present and to come, seems an End that satisfies our imagination by its vastness…”

NOTICE the axioms of Henry Sidgwick represented there. This is a moral position that seeks desirable consciousness or feeling for ALL sentient life whether that’s an animal, a human, an alien species an artificial intelligence…and it’s a position that VALUES this sentient life… REGARDLESS of whether they’re alive right now or are yet to be born. And again: acknowledging that Peter Singer knows there is a LOT of work to be done on the other SIDE of DECLARING this goal…we can AT LEAST understand why a philosopher would TAKE this position on as one that is worth defending, as one that again: satisfies our imagination by its vastness.

I’ll be INTERVIEWING Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek here in a couple days. If you have any BURNING QUESTIONS for them you can always send them my way in the comments or over Patreon. I can’t PROMISE i’ll ask yours, but I’ll definitely pick a few that seem valuable to the whole conversation. 

I hope this was helpful…at clarifying what some of these ethical terms mean. At understanding Peter Singer. And hopefully, as the goal ALWAYS is with this podcast: hopefully it gives you something interesting to sit for a while and think about, to get to know where you stand on things better, something to talk about, to the people in your life that you love. That’s all I’m ever going for here…aside from just trying to give to you, what philosophy has given to me, so graciously, over the years. 

As always though, thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.