On Peter Singer

I should make it official soon.  The recommendations post will be a joint Friday/Saturday affair, and the other day will be a break.  I need it.

The recommendation here is hard to nail down.  Peter Singer is a Philosopher at Princeton, so barring attending Princeton, it's hard to subscribe to him as a person.

That said, he's also a rather famous author, and a coveted guest who's been interviewed in countless other spaces, so his ideas should be pretty easy to access for most.

Singer's claim to fame is basically extending consequentialism to its logical extremity.  He takes it on a long walk that others would think is a reduction ad absurdum and then gives it a warm hug and a medal.  If all we want to do is maximize the well-being of conscious creatures, that asks a lot more of us than we might be willing to accept.

Perhaps the most famous example is his "child drowning in a shallow pond" analogy.   You walk by a pond that's around knee deep, and you see a very small child about to drown.  You look around for the child's guardian, but don't see anyone, your next thought is to jump in and save the child.  But wait!  You're on your way to work and would ruin your dress shoes and pants if you did that.  You decide the child isn't your responsibility and move on, and the child dies.

Most people would say this is somewhere between morally impermissible and evil.  The problem is that we do this every day.  Given what we know about the effective charities and their ability to save lives in developing countries, buying that nice pair of shoes in the first place can be seen as allowing the child to drown.  I should note that the best estimate of the price to reliably save a life right now (provide 30 extra years of healthy living) is closer to $3600.

Singer has other views that might be controversial, and his views on animal ethics may be equally demanding, but this is the example that strikes me, and many others, the hardest.  He does this while being a very unassuming and genuinely pleasant person to listen to.  All the troubles that his philosophy poses, he understands.  He empathizes, but he still feels bad not putting his mom in the cheapest care home he could find, because he knows the money could have been better spent.

All that's to say that I really respect Singer, and I think more people should hear about him and his ideas.  I think it would be entirely reasonable to argue that he's the single most influential philosopher alive, because he's certainly influenced many people that you've heard of and had a profound effect on the conversation in ethics.  If you're not able to read a book anymore (I've been there), then The Ezra Klein Show did a pretty recent and decent interview with him that I think covers many of the bases, and I would recommend.  Many other podcasts I've recommended before have their own versions too.

P.S. posted entirely from mobile for the first time, so apologies if the formatting doesn't work as well.