Peter Singer's Utilitarianism: Animals, Aid, and Happiness

He takes a strongly utilitarian stance, which is why he has been at the center of the debate.

With Animal Liberation in 1975, he set off a worldwide debate on animal rights. He champions effective altruism, such as foreign aid, and has put it into practice himself. On the other hand, he has been criticized for justifying abortion, infanticide cases, and euthanasia of disabled people on utilitarian grounds.

Dostoevsky intended to show that sacrificing a child for peace is wrong. Utilitarians also understand that no one wants to sacrifice a child. But if such a situation actually arose, where dividing 1 by 9 could save tens of millions and end endless war, utilitarians would say one should do it. It is a difficult choice, but they hold that it must be made.

If your daughter's life were at stake in an emergency, most people would choose to save her. In such emergencies, we mostly make the decision that produces the best outcome. In urgent situations, general moral rules cannot be followed.

Singer therefore thinks all of us should follow utilitarianism. Unlike other ethical views, utilitarianism can actually be applied in difficult situations, which is why he prefers it.

The first to speak of utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham. Bentham held that the purpose of life should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that what we should do depends solely on pain and pleasure.

Thomas Carlyle strongly criticized this, accusing it of being a philosophy fit only for pigs. According to Carlyle, humans are better than pigs, and a good life for a pig cannot be a good life for a human.

Singer believes Carlyle misunderstood utilitarianism. What Bentham really meant was not that only the kinds of pleasure pigs enjoy are good, but that all pleasures matter. Maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering is the core of hedonistic utilitarianism.

A US organization that trains guide dogs for the blind spends $40,000 to support a single guide dog. Trachoma in Africa can be prevented and treated easily, and for under $100 one person's blindness can be prevented. The cost of one guide dog would prevent blindness in more than 400 children in poor countries.

The same gap exists between an American charity that grants wishes to children with cancer and a malaria-eradication foundation. The wish-granting charity draws donations by appealing to donors' emotions, while the malaria foundation struggles with a shortage of funds. Singer says that saving two children's lives is better than giving a sick child a day of happiness.

There is an objection that children in distant countries are their own countries' responsibility. The argument is that helping poor children at home comes first, and that children in poor countries dying of malaria is due to their governments failing to do their job, not a responsibility of our own.

Singer offers the case of walking past a pond and seeing a child drowning. If left alone the child will die, yet the pond is shallow and rescue is easy. Then the thought arises that your expensive clothes will be ruined, and that since the child is neither known to you nor your doing, you might look away. Singer's answer is that of course one should save the child, and that the child's life is far more valuable than expensive clothes.

Singer says that if we can save the child in front of us, we should think about saving children in other countries too. In his judgment there is no difference between a child right in front of us and one far away. Both are equally human and equally precious lives.

Humans have psychological tendencies. It is natural to feel more for a child in front of us, and Singer admits that feeling compassion for strangers is not easy.

Even so, the effective altruism movement argues that people should help others efficiently despite such tendencies. If helping people in distant countries is the most efficient choice, that is the choice one should make, which is why the movement focuses on support for low-income countries.

Peter Singer says that if we become effective altruists we can find greater satisfaction in life. For that reason he holds that becoming an effective altruist is not a sacrifice of oneself.

You spend a little less on yourself, but in exchange you spend on building a better world. He says that learning you have changed the world for the better through effective altruism brings a great sense of accomplishment, and closes the lecture on that note.

People could even be killed simply for entering another tribe's territory. As societies developed and expanded, the range of moral concern widened to larger bodies such as nations and religions.

In eighteenth-century Europe, law guaranteed the rights of Europeans, while Black people were treated as property or servants. About a century ago, Nazi Germany murdered vast numbers of Jews for not being Aryan. After World War II, the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that all humans have rights and that those rights must be protected.

Aristotle identified reason as the difference between humans and animals, and argued that beings without reason exist for the sake of more rational ones. But among humans too, some are less rational than others, and people with intellectual disabilities are one example.

Yet using them is not justified. We do not treat people with intellectual disabilities as animals, fatten them up and then slaughter them to eat, or use them in medical experiments. According to Peter Singer, reason cannot be the standard of moral status.

The baby cannot speak, yet the baby still has rights. Bentham said that the standard should be not the capacity to reason or to speak, but whether a being can feel pain.

Peter Singer agrees, saying that animals also feel pain, and that this is why they must not be treated carelessly. He concludes that every being that suffers deserves moral consideration, and that animals too have rights.

Peter Singer says the criterion for granting moral status to a living being is whether it can feel suffering. Vertebrates generally feel pain in ways similar to humans, and some vertebrates show reactions to pain. Observing behavior, he holds that octopuses can feel not only pain but also happiness and unhappiness.

By contrast, it has not been confirmed whether insects or shellfish feel pain. Oysters and clams lack a nervous system complex enough to feel pain. Whether insects or shellfish have subjective experience has not yet been scientifically established.

Peter Singer once thought that domesticated animals might lead happier lives than wild ones. But that was not true. Most farm animals live in crowded factory sheds. Chickens live 20,000 to a barn with no room to spread their wings, and pigs live hundreds to a dark, cramped shed with no activity at all.

Growth hormones used excessively for meat make chickens so bloated they cannot walk, and unsanitary conditions burn their skin so they cannot sit. To produce more meat and eggs at lower prices, we take away the well-being and lives of billions of animals every year.

Peter Singer urges us to go further and cut animal products out of our diets entirely. And if you want to go beyond that, he says, then let us fully reduce our intake of animal products as he has.

He considers this the most important and practical step. If you want to reduce animal suffering and help them live better lives, he says, this is what must be done.

Tellus, a glorious warrior of Athens, lived in a flourishing state, died a glorious death, and was buried with the respect of the people. When King Croesus asked why, Solon answered that Tellus lived in Athens, a flourishing state, died gloriously, and was buried with the respect of the people after his death.

For the ancient Greeks, a good life consisted of things like a flourishing state, a glorious death, and the praise of citizens.

The theory that a life of satisfied desires is a good life is fairly clear. We are happy when we get what we want and sad when we do not. But Peter Singer says we must examine whether this standard can apply equally to every desire. We must ask whether a desire is truly necessary for a good life, or merely a desire.

American philosopher John Rawls gave the example of a desire to count every blade of grass on a lawn. If someone spent their whole life counting the grass, could that be called a good life? It would be a meaningless, addictive life, and one could not say they had reached true happiness. Singer therefore holds that the desire-satisfaction theory is not a sufficient account of a good life either.

Peter Singer says we cannot conclude that the experience machine is not a good life. As the reason for our aversion to the experience machine, he cites the psychological term 'status quo bias': the tendency to feel reluctant toward the new and to want to keep things as they are. Because we live in the real world, we do not want to take on unfamiliar risks, and even when a better alternative is offered, we want to keep the current state.

If you ask people whether they live in a virtual reality like in The Matrix and whether they would leave it for reality, most hesitate to leave. Taking the red pill takes great courage. Conversely, if you ask people living in reality whether they would enter the experience machine, they answer that they would stay in reality. Singer's assessment is that Nozick's experience machine thought experiment failed to effectively refute hedonism because it overlooked this human psychology.

Peter Singer proposes living according to the values we hold and spending time with friends who pursue the same values as ways to be happy more lastingly. Research also shows that using money for others brings greater and longer-lasting satisfaction.

Pursuing happiness directly actually reduces satisfaction. This is Easterlin's paradox. You cannot attain happiness by buying things in order to be happy. You can be happy by making others happy or by investing in developing a skill. Even in a game, you are more likely to find happiness if you enjoy the game itself rather than striving for the pleasure of winning. So Singer closes by saying that even if happiness is our ultimate goal, it is better not to seek it directly.