ipl-logo

Peter Singer Utilitarianism

919 Words4 Pages

Peter Singer is considered a utilitarian which is one who believes that an action is right that it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the main concern. Singer states in his piece, “All Animal Are Equal”, speciesism is defined as a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of other species. There is a lot of small objection towards Singers thought process, but I think the issue lies in structure of his thinking. Singers definition of what an “interest” is can be confusing and misleading. Singer defines an “interest” as a something one shows favoritism towards. His definition is called preference utilitarian and the problem is that it treats interests and desires to be equal to each other.
Envision two people that are in an intimate relationship. Mary wants to have intercourse with Ted. Her wants would be defined as a personal desire and preference which needs to be satisfied. Jill without knowledge has no idea that Ted has AIDs. Thus, if Mary has sex with Ted she will contract AIDs which is bad for her self-interest and would be caused by her desire for intercourse with Ted. Resulting in a conflict …show more content…

This causes a contradiction amongst desires and interests, between opinion and fact. Humans can have interest that cause good and bad things to happen. Death would be defined as a bad thing and not in a human’s interest. Living in most case would be considered an interest of most animals and humans. Certain situations may arise where suicidal people may want to take their life where death might be an interest for that individual. When it comes to organism like bacteria to live or die, the living would be in its interest. That bacteria’s lack of mental capacity to decide whether living or dying is in their interest and we can assume that death is never in their

Show More
Related
302 Words | 2 Pages

The Singer Solution to World Poverty” written by Peter Singer. In the essay that Peter Singer wrote has a main point which is to give solution to the world poverty and how to deal with with the situation to end it. The article narrates that the philosophy Peter Singer demonstrate about the world poverty.

Read More
907 Words | 4 Pages

What do you do when charitable organizations call you asking for money? Do you donate money to the organization or do you ignore it? In 1999 Peter Singer wrote the article The Singer Solution to World Poverty where he argues “that each one of us with wealth surplus to his or her essential needs should be giving most of it to help people suffering poverty so dire as to be life-threatening.” Singer does this by introducing his article with two very different examples: a woman who saved a child’s life and a man who killed a child to save his Bugatti. Secondly, he proposes how much money would be required to save a child from starvation, $200, and explains why more people do not give even though in the grand scheme of things $200 is not that much money.

Read More
1699 Words | 7 Pages

In Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” he argues the importance of donation to poor people, which could mean the difference between life and death for children in need. He gives an example for Bob, who has an opportunity to save a child’s life, but he could lose his worthy car. He makes a comparison between people who are capable to donate money to save children lives and people who have no chance to help or donate under certain situation such as Bob. He also encourages people who are in the middle class to donate at a minimum of 200$; furthermore, he thinks that people should donate more like 200.000$ when they consider the level of sacrifice that they would demand of Bob’s situation. He gives some estimates for the amount of donations that people should give to overseas.

Read More
151 Words | 1 Pages

I would have to disagree with Singer assumption that we are all trained to believe that death is always portrayed with a negative connotation, if anything many people believe that death is not the end. Whether we become angels, spirits, or reincarnations many people want have a positive perspective when they will eventually perish. Of course one could argue that beliefs like these exist in part due to the fear of death itself and expecting that we continue existing in some fashion offers provides some relief.    In regards to the question, people here have already given answers that would I agree with, assuming that Mrs. Bennett wasn't embellishing her story in order to frame both her and her husband in a optimistic light, I also can believe

Read More
648 Words | 3 Pages

American political leader Anna Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” There are some people that live their lives happily everyday while there are some that are living in bitterness. Life is a cycle that everyone experiences from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and finally ends with death. Some may believe that maybe if a human being is no longer content with life anymore, then he or she might as well no longer be alive. The issue of euthanasia has been one of the most discussed ethical situations among healthcare workers and patients.

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

Money: the root of most social problems and one of the few matters that almost everyone has an opinion on. Peter Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty,” a newspaper article, is no exception. Singer argues that one should donate all unnecessary money to the less fortunate because of the morality of the situation. However, though the goal is noble, his commentary is very ineffective due to its condescending tone, lack of hard facts, and overall extremism. The piece is written by Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University.

Read More
1325 Words | 6 Pages

Caleb Stephens April 15, 2017 Introduction to Philosophy The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that Philippa Foot’s objection, raised to her own argument against utilitarianism, is correct. Her initial thesis is that benevolence, while the foundation of utilitarianism, is an internal end of morality, rather than the ultimate end of morality. The possible objection to this that there must be some overarching reason behind morality, which must imply a form of consequentialism. The response she offers is that there should be some other form of morality, which is a weak argument, as it does not provide an alternate conception of morality itself.

Read More
1959 Words | 8 Pages

Responding to Singer: On Individualism and Pragmatics Michael Anderson Soh Sheng Rong Matriculation number: U1731581B 22 September 2017 Words: 1917 This paper is written as a response to Singer’s “Famine, Affluence and Morality”. Singer poses what he deems a moral obligation to mankind. That is, we are not just responsible for our personal good and are instead obligated to intervene to rescue others from suffering if we possess the capability to do so.

Read More
727 Words | 3 Pages

In this paper, I argue that Singer’s strong principle of sacrifice is flawed due to its over -demandingness. Singer denotes that as affluent individuals, we have a moral obligation to sacrifice up to the point of comparable moral significance to help those in absolute poverty. This essay will argue against Singer’s strong principle as it is psychologically too strong of an argument to be morally obliging. Singer’s argument exhorts us to give based on the controversial principle of comparable moral significance, to donate any income beyond that which is marginally necessary. Singer justifies this based on the knowledge that the suffering of a poor person should be no less significant to that of an affluent one (Singer, 1972).

Read More
1565 Words | 7 Pages

Bernard Williams’ essay, A Critique of Utilitarianism, launches a rather scathing criticism of J. J. C. Smart’s, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian ethics. Even though Williams claims his essay is not a direct response to Smart’s paper, the manner in which he constantly refers to Smart’s work indicates that Smart’s version of Utilitarianism, referred to as act-Utilitarianism, is the main focus of Williams’ critique. Smart illustrates the distinction between act-Utilitarianism and rule-Utilitarianism early on in his work. He says that act-Utilitarianism is the idea that the rightness of an action depends on the total goodness of an action’s consequences.

Read More
1193 Words | 5 Pages

When discussing both act and rule utilitarianism, it is important to understand that both of them agree in terms of the overall consequence of an action, because they emphasize on creating the most beneficial pleasure and happiness in the outcome of an act. Despite this fact, they both have different principles and rules that make them different from each other. Act utilitarianism concentrates on the acts of individuals. Meaning that if a person commits an action, he/she must at least have a positive utility. The founders of utilitarianism define positive utility as happiness and pleasure and consider it to be a driving force of all positive and morally right acts.

Read More
2076 Words | 9 Pages

Animals Rights In society, animals are being killed for food, fur, and experiments. This raises the question is it ethical to kill other animals for our own person gain? As human, we live in a society where it is humane to kill other animals when it comes to survival, clothing and to help cure diseases. But this is not really answering the question why is this okay?

Read More
1564 Words | 7 Pages

Utilitarian suggest that we make our moral decisions from the position of a benevolent, disinterested spectator. Rather than thinking about

Read More
1228 Words | 5 Pages

He proposes to “act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end..” (O’Neil, 2008, p. 112). The utilitarian view, on the other hand, will use a human being as a means to an end if they are to benefit the majority. For example, the utilitarian would consider murdering one person if it can save the lives of thousands of Canadian citizens. In this situation, the utilitarian would be treating the individual as mere means, rather than as ends in themselves.

Read More
1685 Words | 7 Pages

Utilitarianism is a teleological ethical theory based on the idea that an action is moral if it causes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. The theory is concerned with predicted consequences or outcomes of a situation rather than focusing on what is done to get to the outcome. There are many forms of utilitarianism, having been introduced by Jeremy Bentham (act utilitarianism), and later being updated by scholars such as J.S. Mill (rule utilitarianism) and Peter Singer (preference utilitarianism). When referring to issues of business ethics, utilitarianism can allow companies to decide what to do in a given situation based on a simple calculation. Many people would agree that this idea of promoting goodness

Read More

More about Peter Singer Utilitarianism

Related Topics

Open Document