Peter Singer

[Didymus]

So we're lookin at Peter Singer in ethics, which is messed up to begin with. This guy is a creep.

but my professor is trying to make us accept his defining humanity by sentience rather than rationality, and she's making me feel like I would be the cold-hearted one in thinking otherwise.

She is positing that if we define humankind by rationality, then we are leaving out those who are braindead and those infants who have not yet actualized rational thinking.

Now she is basically positing this because she wants to see if we can accept Singers theory of thus including some members of the animal kingdom onto our level of dignity simply because many animals can prove to be more intelligent than the newborn because we would thus be defining our Species by sentience rather than rationality.

my argument was based on the whole potential vs actual scenario, since both the baby and those in a coma or a pvs have potential to be rational, whereas the animal does not and never will be. But I could not seem to put it into better words.

Another aspect she brought up is Singer's idea of speciesism, by which he refers to the mentality where humanity just thinks it is superior to other species while avoiding arguments such as the sentience vs rationality...

I'm probably not able to word this as best as I can verbally discuss it, but if anyone can help, that'd be sweet...

Edited November 28, 2007 by Didymus

[Mateo el Feo]

Off the top of my head: do we lose our humanity when we fall asleep?

[Didymus]

I brought up the fact that even a newborn can categorize and see universals but an animal cannot. Is this true? and if so, then what do I mean when I'm saying this... cuz it sounds right but I don't know why...

[Didymus]

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' post='1426263' date='Nov 28 2007, 12:23 PM']Off the top of my head: do we lose our humanity when we fall asleep?[/quote]

we can still be rational in a lower state of consciousness, no?

we can still feel pain in or sleep, so wouldn't that support Singer?

I am so confused...

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Didymus' post='1426267' date='Nov 28 2007, 01:25 PM']we can still be rational in a lower state of consciousness, no?

we can still feel pain in or sleep, so wouldn't that support Singer?

I am so confused...[/quote]If feeling pain is the criterion, then all animals are rational.

Anyway, I have had some pretty irrational dreams... LOL

[Didymus]

no, if feeling pain is the criteria rather than rationality, then animals have the diginity of humans

[Didymus]

good answer with regards to dreams, btw.

If we had to exclude the braindead from the rational, then we would techincally have to exclude ourselves, because we often find ourselves dreaming irrationally. Thus, to be human is to always have the potential towards rationality...?

Edited November 28, 2007 by Didymus

[Mateo el Feo]

Even worse, it's not too hard to induce a comma-like state (e.g. anesthesia), yet I don't think we forfeit our humanity at these times, do we? LOL

[Socrates]

[quote name='Didymus' post='1426257' date='Nov 28 2007, 01:20 PM']So we're lookin at Peter Singer in ethics, which is messed up to begin with. This guy is a creep.

but my professor is trying to make us accept his defining humanity by sentience rather than rationality, and she's making me feel like I would be the cold-hearted one in thinking otherwise.

She is positing that if we define humankind by rationality, then we are leaving out those who are braindead and those infants who have not yet actualized rational thinking.

Now she is basically positing this because she wants to see if we can accept Singers theory of thus including some members of the animal kingdom onto our level of dignity simply because many animals can prove to be more intelligent than the newborn because we would thus be defining our Species by sentience rather than rationality.

my argument was based on the whole potential vs actual scenario, since both the baby and those in a coma or a pvs have potential to be rational, whereas the animal does not and never will be. But I could not seem to put it into better words.

Another aspect she brought up is Singer's idea of speciesism, by which he refers to the mentality where humanity just thinks it is superior to other species while avoiding arguments such as the sentience vs rationality...

I'm probably not able to word this as best as I can verbally discuss it, but if anyone can help, that'd be sweet...[/quote]
I wrote an article on Peter Singer once, and read some of his books and writings for research. He is one sick sob.
He supports infanticide up to one or two years after birth, as well as "mercy killing" of the terminally ill and assisted suicide. He says apes, and perhaps many other animals, should have the same legal rights as human beings, and condones bestiality (since he regards humans as basically no different from other animals).


Potential does not seem to enter in to Peter's thought regarding a right to life. He basically says every creature's right to life comes from its current level of sentience. (For instance, if an adult dog shows more sentience or mental ability than a week-old infant, he would say the dog deserves more rights than the baby.)

Singer doesn't appear to believe in "rationality" in the classical Aristotelian sense. He considers the mental abilities of human beings to be different from higher animals like apes by degree, not kind.

[quote name='Mateo el Feo' post='1426263' date='Nov 28 2007, 01:23 PM']Off the top of my head: do we lose our humanity when we fall asleep?[/quote]
Singer answers this objection by saying that in his system of ethics, we must respect the presumed will of sentient creatures when they fall asleep to wake up alive the next morning. (He says for this reason he supports respecting the written wills of people as to whether they wish to live or die when seriously ill or incapacitated.)
I think it's a weak argument, but that's his line.

Edited November 29, 2007 by Socrates

[Akalyte]

Peter Singer is one of the architects of the culture of death....Dangerous man.

[elizabeth_jane]

Well this being Singer you automatically can't use anything connected to God or reason. So what does that leave you with?

The argument that Singer's thoughts lead us down a very slippery slope might work but it's probably not the best one. As in, you could say that if Singer's thoughts are true, then where do you draw the line? Everyone, at some point or another, is not in full possession of their faculties, either because of medication or they've had too much tequilla or whatever. The question would be what do you do in a state where this is persistent.

The infanticide/baby part is pretty easy to refute because you can say that babies grow up. They will develop their rational abilities as they age; usually a 3 or 4 year old, and even some 2 year olds, know if they've done something wrong. They might not know why, but look at any two year old who's stolen a cookie or broken something and they usually know they weren't supposed to do that. So to support infanticide would mean that you're for killing people as they are in the process of developing critical thinking/rational skills. In which case, why not kill people until the ages of 7, 10, etc.? When do our rational skills fully develop? (In some cases I wonder if they ever show up )

As for people in PSV, etc.--can you argue that they have rational faculties, but they just can't access them? Take Terri Schiavo for instance--she had those facilities until she entered her PSV. So was she once human, and now she's not?

[Hirsap]

Here is an article entitled "Impractical Ethics", by one by the name of Don Boland, discussing the flaws of Singer's 'ethics'. [url="http://www.cts.org.au/files/pdf/IMPRACTICAL%20ETHICS.pdf"]http://www.cts.org.au/files/pdf/IMPRACTICAL%20ETHICS.pdf[/url]

Edited December 5, 2007 by Hirsap

[Didymus]

thanks Hirsap!

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1426571' date='Nov 29 2007, 04:25 AM']I wrote an article on Peter Singer once, and read some of his books and writings for research. He is one sick sob.
He supports infanticide up to one or two years after birth, as well as "mercy killing" of the terminally ill and assisted suicide. He says apes, and perhaps many other animals, should have the same legal rights as human beings, and condones bestiality (since he regards humans as basically no different from other animals).
Potential does not seem to enter in to Peter's thought regarding a right to life. He basically says every creature's right to life comes from its current level of sentience. (For instance, if an adult dog shows more sentience or mental ability than a week-old infant, he would say the dog deserves more rights than the baby.)[/quote]

As an autistic person heavily involved in autistic rights, especially the anti-cure movement (which is stealthily working towards eugenics and preventative abortion), I am wearily familar with arguments of this sort. I prefer to answer from my own experience, as I find that my brain presents an interesting conundrum for ethicists of Singer's school.

The Weschler Adult Intelligence Scales, an assessment used for autism and dyspraxia, among other things, yields two IQ scores: a verbal score and a performance score. The verbal score measures spelling, reading, comprehension, arithmetic, memory, etc. The performance score measures spatial awareness, perceptual skills, sequencing, the ability to decode patterns, and processing speed. 100 is the average score for both tests, and there is a companion test that can be administered to children.

I have a performance IQ of 63. Anything below 75 is in the mentally retarded range. And that's my average score. If you look at some of the subtests in the performance category, I do even worse - I am in the bottom 0.3% of my age-related peers for processing speed, which means that a chimpanzee could accomplish some tasks that I just can't do. If you make a Singer-style extrapolation, the chimpanzee deserves to be treated equally with me - or, more to the point, I deserve to be put on a par with the chimpanzee.

The autistic writer Donna Williams fares even worse. Her full-scale IQ - verbal and performance scores together - emerges at 70. Yet she is the best-selling author of award-winning books that are both beautifully written and well researched. The reason for her low score is that most intelligent tests are built on the premise that there is a definitive type of human intelligence, and that the more closely you conform to that type, the more intelligent you are. The autism researcher Michelle Dawson has noted that autistics who are written off as mentally retarded after taking the kind of comparative intelligence tests that generate 'mental ages' - the sort of testing that Singer obviously favours, going by his descriptions of animal intelligence versus human intelligence - do much better on the test known as Ravens Progressive Matrices. This test is much more in line with autistic thought patterns.

And that's the crucial part. Singer's definition of what it means to be human is based on the assumption that he already knows what thought and sentience are and that they can measured, quantified, and compared to the way that animals exhibit intelligence. No one who has read the books of Donna Williams or heard her speak at conferences would call her mentally retarded. As I wrote an award-winning book at the age of sixteen and got the best result in England for my A-Level English exam, out of half a million candidates, I doubt that anyone would call me mentally retarded either.

But according to internationally standardised criteria for measurement, that is exactly what I am. The question here is not how we define what it means to be human, but how we define what it is to think.

Edited December 5, 2007 by Cathoholic Anonymous

[elizabeth_jane]

Excellent post. I second all thoughts.