Peter Singer: 'What's an infanticidal zoophilic preference utilitarian to do?'

The Guardian:

Peter Singer was in Oxford last week. The bestselling advocate of utilitarianism was the star contributor to a conference in which he talked with a group of Christian ethicists. Given Singer's inflammatory views on matters such as euthanasia and infanticide, the dialogue was striking for its agreements, particularly the common cause that can be made between Christians and utilitarians when tackling global poverty, animal exploitation and climate change.

Singer, in case you haven't encountered him, is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He's considered the most important academic ethicist in the world. He is the author of Practical Ethics, perhaps the most widely used college textbook on ethics. His extraordinary academic accomplishments in ethics of course should suggest to you one thing:


He's nuts. Utterly nuts.


The Guardian:

However, it was on the last issue that the conference demonstrated real philosophical interest too. Singer admitted that his brand of utilitarianism – preference utilitarianism – struggles to get to grips with the vastness of the problem of climate change. Further, there is an element that comes naturally to Christian ethics which his ethics might need in order to do so. It has to do with whether there are moral imperatives that can be held as objectively true.

Singer has endorsed zoophilia as long as the animal enjoys it too ('Well, she certainly seemed to like it-- I've never heard her cluck so loud'!),  endorsed abortion (of course), and has even endorsed killing handicapped babies under a year of age if their parents don't want them.


Singer holds to preference utilitarianism:

[The] [m]oral theory according to which the good consists in the satisfaction of people's preferences, and the rightness of an action depends directly or indirectly on its being productive of such satisfaction. Like other kinds of consequentialism, the theory has satisficing and maximising variants. The latter are the more common ones: the more people get what they want, the better.

Do what feels good!

Bummer if you're a burden to others, though.



Now Singer has found an ethical problem so huge that it defies even his utilitarian recipe:

Climate change is a challenge to utilitarianism on at least two accounts. First, the problem of reducing the carbon output of humanity is tied to the problem of rising human populations. The more people there are, the greater becomes the difficulty of tackling climate change. This fact sits uneasily for a preference utilitarian, who would be inclined to argue that the existence of more and more sentient beings enjoying their lives – realising their preferences – is a good thing. As Singer puts it in the new edition of his book, Practical Ethics: "I have found myself unable to maintain with any confidence that the position I took in the previous edition – based solely on preference utilitarianism – offers a satisfactory answer to these quandaries."

Second, preference utilitarianism also runs into problems because climate change requires that we consider the preferences not only of existing human beings, but of those yet to come. And we can have no confidence about that, when it comes to generations far into the future. Perhaps they won't much care about Earth because the consumptive delights of life on other planets will be even greater. Perhaps they won't much care because a virtual life, with its brilliant fantasies, will seem far more preferable than a real one. What this adds up to is that preference utilitarianism can provide good arguments not to worry about climate change, as well as arguments to do so.

What bothers Singer is that climate change 'science' implies that healthy thriving human beings are bad for the earth, and that to be moral we must... concern ourselves with future generations!

Arrghhh... What's an infanticidal zoophilic preference utilitarian to do?


Christianity, of course.

This brings us to the issue that Christians find comes naturally, namely the claim that there exists objective moral truths. In recent moral philosophy, such an assertion has been unfashionable.

Utilitarian moral philosophers have indeed denied that objective moral truths exist. Unless you take their parking spot in the faculty lot.


No objective moral truth? Who's to blame?

The Enlightenment thinker David Hume can be blamed. He argued that the reasons anyone has for action will always actually be based upon their desires. "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger," he asserted.

It took Singer 60 years to figure out that Hume was an idiot.

Further, as wants and desires cannot be said to be true or false, so it makes no sense fundamentally to assert that moral judgments are true or false too. This subjectivism has been held in different ways by individuals from AJ Ayer to Simon Blackburn.

Out-of-fashion Christian ethicists have always insisted that moral laws are real and exist independently of  the opinions of men. Specifically, it's not ok to destroy the whole world rather than scratch your finger. Christian ethics is controversial.

Christian ethicists have never been tempted to believe that moral values are unhinged from an objective horizon. As Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at Christ Church, Oxford, put it at the conference, that there are moral givens is part of what it means to affirm one deity as the creator. Creation is made in order to realise what is good and true

But of course objective morality can be... oppressive:

Clearly, what Christians have claimed as divine moral givens can prove oppressive. The Bible and Christian history alike provide copious examples. But, serious as that setback is, it is not of itself a reason to deny moral givens. Singer himself now seems more inclined to accept as much.

Right. 'Oppressive' Christian morality.  Like the view that we have a special obligation to help the the poor and the sick, and that it's wrong to kill children before they're born and to kill them after birth if they are inconvenient to us,  or that it's wrong to cheat on your wife or have sex with animals. Christian morality has proven such a hinderance to man!

Christian history is one oppression after another.

[Singer] described his current position as being in a state of flux. But he is leaning towards accepting moral objectivity because he now rejects Hume's view that practical reasoning is always subject to desire. Instead, he inclines towards the view of Henry Sidgwick, the Victorian theist whom he has called the greatest utilitarian, which is that there are moral assertions that we recognise intuitively as true. At the conference, he offered two possible examples, that suffering is intrinsically bad, and that people's preferences should be satisfied. He has not yet given up on preference utilitarianism. 

Keep working on it, Peter.

Neither is he any more inclined to belief in God, though he did admit that there is a sense in which he "regrets" not doing so,

Singer will regret it more, later.

[Belief in God]  is the only way to provide a complete answer to the question, why act morally?

"Duh!" will be the title of Singer's next textbook.

Only faith in a good God finally secures the conviction that living morally coincides with living well. 

What difference does this make to climate change? Tim Mulgan, professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of St Andrews, explained why ethical objectivism may be vital to making a robust ethical case against environmental degradation. Only a doctrine of creation can affirm that we are fundamentally linked to the natural order manifest on Earth. The fantasy of fleeing this planet, or disappearing into virtual reality, won't actually do. Our island home matters because the lives of human beings go well only when her natural systems go well too. Or, as the psalmist intuited many centuries ago: "Truth shall spring out of the earth."

Bottom line: 

The specter of killing handicapped children and having sex with animals didn't budge Singer from his utilitarian philosophy. However, the climate change hoax has caused him to rethink things.

My head hurts...

Beliefs and believers

I've expressed some pretty strong views on Islam, and I do want to clarify my views.

Islam is not the same thing as Muslims, obviously.

Islam, in my view, has little to recommend it.  I agree with the assessment of emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in the 14th century:

Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Islam of course has many good attributes: a call to holiness, to charity, to temperance, etc. But all of those moral imperatives are found in Christianity (and Judaism and many other faiths). What is unique to Islam is violence and a grossly mistaken view of God. Islam is an enormous threat to man, and needs to be strongly resisted and challenged.

But what of individual Muslims? The vast majority of Muslims are decent kind people, trying to live their lives just as I am trying to live mine. They love and care for their families, do good deeds, worship, and try to get through life with as much decency and integrity as they can. Just like the rest of us.

Muslims deserve precisely the same respect and friendship that each of us does. I have many Muslim colleagues and patients, and I must say that they are among the people I most respect. There's a certain courtesy and gratitude from my Muslim patients that I don't often see from others.

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I was in the OR locker room preparing for a case, and one of my Muslim friends (his wife was my scrub nurse) was crying quietly. I asked him I could help. He told me that he came to the U.S. about 5 years before, and that he was really trying to build a good life for his family. He was afraid that after these horrible attacks that he would lose all of the goodwill he had built, and that he would have to leave America. I told him that I didn't think that individual Muslims would suffer or be targeted. He moved away from Long Island shortly thereafter, and we recently got a holiday card from him and his family. They have settled in the midwest and are doing very well.

Beliefs should be scrutinized with vigor,and all beliefs-- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Atheism, etc--  are fair game. I detest political correctness and I'm no multiculturalist. I think Christian culture is better than other cultures. I don't equivocate.

Yet people who hold beliefs with which we disagree should always be treated with decency, no matter how strongly we may object to the beliefs they hold. Every human being bears God's image.

We are within our rights and even our responsibilities to judge ideas and acts, but we must not judge people.

I hope my strong views on Islam (and atheism for that matter) are understood in that light.

"You did claim to be a neurosurgeon...?"

Commentor bachfiend:

You did claim to be a neurosurgeon who should have some basic understanding of neuroscience?...

bachfiend made this manifestly rude comment in reply to a minor rather esoteric point I had made about the definition of "imaginary".

Why the rudeness? Why would he question my professional competence because I disagreed with him about the definition of a word in a philosophical discussion?

Note that bachfiend (who seems to be a retired pathologist) knows nothing about me professionally, except what he's read on the web. I'm a qualified neurosurgeon, teach at a medical school, hold a tenured professorship (academic, not clinical), am an active researcher, and am vice-chairman of my department.

Why would bachfiend question my basic competence as a neurosurgeon, based on a difference of opinion about the definition of a word?

Think about this:

Imagine that I were a young scientist, a grad student or an untenured assistant professor, and I expressed viewpoints that did not 'fit' with the atheist/materialist zeitgeist. Perhaps I said that I didn't think that atheism was an adequate view of origins of the universe, or perhaps I had some questions about the logical rigor behind the Darwinian paradigm. Or perhaps I mustered enough courage to say I believed in God.

bachfiend's nasty slip gives you a clear example of the viciousness that young and vulnerable scientists face every day if they question materialism and atheism. If you don't tow the ideological line-- if you don't agree with all of their definitions and their metaphysics-- they'll come after you, professionally and personally.

I've had friends who are basic scientists and Christians tell me that they dare not speak out. They'll never get another job or another grant.

Nasty stuff.

Remember that it's our money-- in the form of research funding-- that many of these atheist thugs are using to enforce their ideological conformity.

What is science?

New atheists invoke 'science' as the pinnacle of methods to find truth.

In fact, atheists of a positivist inclination assert that science is the only way to know truth. By science, they explicitly mean methodological naturalism. Implicitly, they presume philosophical naturalism.

But what is 'science'?

Traditionally, as understood by philosophers from the ancient Greeks to the scholastics, scientia was Latin for "knowing" and "understanding". Scientia was an organized body of knowledge. It did not refer only to knowledge of nature. Theology was scientia. Ethics was scientia. Knowledge of nature was referred to as natural philosophy.

From the early modern period, science came to refer to scientia of the natural world. It has generally been distinguished by the scientific method-- a system of testing hypotheses about the natural world. Science came to mean primarily the acquisition of knowledge about nature that permits the manipulation of nature.

Understanding nature is, of course, still philosophy. It is still a kind of knowing. Scientia of nature, understood classically.

Science is stipulated to be the study of nature. So, of course, it cannot adjudicate the existence of the supernatural. It is a way of knowing tailored to knowing nature. And science understood as metaphysical naturalism does not presuppose natural causes. It presupposes natural effects. Supernatural causes are very much in the purview of natural science, as long as they have natural effects. An obvious example of a natural effect with a supernatural cause (by definition!) is the Big Bang. Nature itself cannot be caused by nature.

The question as to whether nature is all that exists is a question beyond science. It is a philosophical question broadly. It is a metaphysical question specifically.

From metaphysics, the argument that nature is all that exists is extraordinarily weak. Only two metaphysical arguments of any substance at all have been advanced to defend the assertion that nature is all that exists.

Hume proposed that perhaps nature, not God, is the ground of Being. If one must stop in causal regress, why not stop at nature, instead of God?

The reply to Hume preceded Hume. Scholastics had pointed out centuries earlier that the ground of existence must itself contain the principle of its own existence. It must not be contingent. But nature is contingent. It changes constantly, and its components begin and cease to exist continuously. In fact, we now know that nature (the universe) had a moment of beginning. It could not be its own cause of existence because nothing can cause itself to exist. Existence must be caused by Something outside of nature. That Something must Itself have an essence (what It is) that is existence (that It is). The Cause of nature must be outside of nature. Supernatural.

Kant understood the power of this argument, but he denied that we can extend logic to the supernatural. He asserted that all that we can know is the reality presented by our senses- the phenomenal. Reality-in-itself-- the noumenal-- was unknowable to us. he did believe in God, but he believed that God could only be known through the moral law in each of us-- the Categorical Imperative, but not through logic.

There are two problems with Kant's reasoning. The first is that the inference to the Prime Mover/First Cause/Necessary Existence is a deductive argument that extends only through the phenomenal-- through the world as known to the senses. The Ground for Existence is the conclusion of arguments restricted to phenomenal premises. We can validly infer that a Ground for Existence must exist based solely on phenomenal arguments. The nature of the Ground for Existence may be noumenal, but its necessary existence is demonstrable. The argument is phenomenal, and valid.

The other problem with Kant's critique is that if we understand the Ground for Existence as entirely beyond human understanding, including the conclusion that such a Ground exists, then we violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR). The PSR asserts that everything has a reason for its existence. It of course does not assert that we currently know the reason for everything (we obviously don't), but it asserts that a reason for everything does exist.

If the Ground for Existence is Kantian noumenal, and intrinsically unknowable and beyond confirmation of its existence, then the PSR is violated. But is the PSR is violated for the universe, then it is violated for each component of the universe. If nothing in the universe needs a reason for its existence, then science and logic are without foundation. 'It just happened' becomes an acceptable explanation for anything and everything.

If Kant is right, then the reasoning Kant used to arrive at his conclusion is without ground. Kant's argument is ultimately self-refuting.

The atheist may reply that the need for a Ground for Existence must apply to God Himself, and therefore recourse to the supernatural doesn't spare us infinite regression.

The atheist would be wrong. God is supernatural, and therefore not a "thing" in need of explanation. If fact, only a supernatural Ground can stop infinite regress. God's essence is His existence.

Science is the study of nature using the scientific method. It has no traction on supernatural questions.

Metaphysics, which does have traction on questions of ultimate reality, provides a powerful and thus far unrefuted argument for His necessary existence.

Muslims and making Jews disappear

From Matthew Knee at Legal Insurrection:

UNESCO Edits The Jews Out Of History (Again)

Posted by Matthew Knee Saturday, July 23, 2011 at 9:45am

A recent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report on Arab contributions to science has declared Moses ben Maimon (also known as Maimonides or Rambam), generally considered the greatest of medieval Jewish philosophers and theologians (and incidentally, among the most prominent physicians of his day) to have been a Muslim named Moussa ben Maimoun.

For those who are skeptical, or who note that Maimonides, who lived under Muslim rule, was also called by that Arabic name, Elder of Ziyon has tracked down the original document in French. I double-checked his translation with a friend from France and with Google Translate, but then also realized that changing the “_fr” to “_en” in the URL would probably get me to the English version of the file, which it did. The English version contains the following passage:

“From AD 1100–1350 – during the first half of the European Middle Ages (AD 1100–1543) – the names of a few European scientists appear in scientific literature alongside a string of Muslim scientists, whose numbers include Ibn-Rushd, Musa Bin Memoun, Tusi and Ibn-Nafis.”

This is not the first time that UNESCO has changed history to replace Jews with Muslims. They have been prolific in Islamicizing sites long considered to have religious and historical importance to the Jewish people. Last year, Rachel’s Tomb, traditionally considered the burial place of the Jewish matriarch Rachel, was declared by UNESCO to be a Muslim historical site called “Mosque of Bilal Ibn-Rabach,” and the Cave of the Patriarchs, where most of the other Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs and a number of important later figures are said to be buried, to be an Islamic holy site called the “Al-Haram Al-Ibrahami” (“The Mosque of Abraham”).

The West has made no effort to prevent this rewriting of history, in part because these holy sites are located in areas currently controlled by the Palestinians, and neither Obama nor the Europeans have any interest in defending Jewish historical claims to those sites. In Judaism, the greatest curse one can utter is Yemach Shemo (“May his name be blotted out”). The worst thing that can happen to a person or a people is to be not only annihilated but forgotten, not only disempowered, but so thoroughly defeated as to have no legacy, no lasting impact on the world. To be as dust to the ages.

Erasing Jewish history and contributions – whether its holy sites or its heroes – is not only an attempt at delegitimizing the Jewish claim to their historical homeland, but an act of great violence, and one that must not continue.

Anti-semitism is alive and well among Western elites. The quislings recognize the rise of Islam, just as they recognized the rise of Nazi paganism, and they are happy and willing to sell out Jews and Christians to advance the Muslim ad campaign. Whole Islamic cultures celebrate the murder of Jewish civilians and shamelessly call for a new Holocaust.

Obviously, the Islamic world today is an intellectual sewer, a stew of anti-Semitic venom and crude Islamic boilerplate. Islamic science and scholarship are rare pickings. Even the little glimmers of Islamic enlightenment have origins outside of Islam.

The references to an 'Islamic Golden Age' omit the fact that much of the scholarship from Muslim lands a thousand years ago derived from the Christian and Jewish dhimmi trapped in the dar-al-Islam. Sociologist/historian Rodney Stark has pointed out that in most civilizations overrun by Islamic armies, it took 250-300 years before even half of the population was actually Muslim.

Crediting much of the science in Muslim-conquered lands in the Middle Ages to Islam is akin to crediting the theory of relativity to German nationalism.

For many centuries after the Muslim conquests, most of the citizens in the Muslim world weren't Muslims. By the 14th century, when most subjects of the dar-al-Islam were Muslims, the "Islamic Golden Age" ended.

The Islamic Golden Age ended... when it became Islamic.

The reasons that Islam is a science-extinguisher are many: Islamic governance is theocratic, and intrinsically suppresses independent secular endeavor. There is traditional Muslim opposition to explication of natural laws because ulma declared such laws 'blasphemous' because they restrict 'Allah's freedom to act'. There is no "Render unto Caesar... Render unto God... "in Islam. There is only 'Render'.

Islamic theology depicts Allah as radically willful, capricious, without intrinsic reason. There is no 'Logos' theology in Islam. Islam means "submission", which is no prescription for science (except maybe for evolutionary biology).

Islam is a crude religion, a warlike political cult, utterly lacking in original scholarship. But imams know how to cultivate dhimmis. Western elites know where the money and the fatwas come from, and are only too happy to sell Jews (and Christians) down the creek to curry favor with the caliphate. 

When homicidal morons collide...

From ALLAHPUNDIT:

Al Qaeda warns Iran: Knock it off with the 9/11 conspiracy theories

The inevitable follow-up to Ahmadinejad’s UN speech. I hate to see friends fight, but look on the bright side: I’m sure they both agree on the essential fraudulence of the Holocaust. Maybe that can be the common ground that heals the breach.

And so, 10 years after 9/11, it’s come to this. The new vanguard in the endless struggle against Trutherism is … Al Qaeda. 

In the latest issue of the al Qaeda English-language magazine “Inspire”, an author appears to take offense to the “ridiculous” theory repeatedly spread by Ahmadinejad that the 9/11 terror attacks were actually carried out by the U.S. government in order to provide a pretext to invade the Middle East.

“The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government,” an article reads. “So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?”…

“For them, al Qaeda was a competitor for the hearts and minds of the disenfranchised Muslims around the world,” the article says. “Al Qaeda… succeeded in what Iran couldn’t. Therefore it was necessary for the Iranians to discredit 9/11 and what better way to do so? Conspiracy theories.”

That’s super, but AQ’s relationship with Iran is a lot more complicated than their propaganda would have you believe. I wonder if the tool who wrote that article realizes that and is simply pushing out standard anti-Shiite Wahhabist yammering or if he’s so low on the totem pole that he actually doesn’t know about the collusion at the top. Ah well, no matter. There is a point to this post — namely, revisiting the old but gold Onion video from a years ago that anticipated this surreal dispute. I’m pretty sure “Omar al-Farouq” has since been liquidated in a CIA drone strike. Enjoy.

Al Qaeda to Iran: did you forget to say 'thank you'?

Disappoint-mints

This is funny:

Obama Breath Mints Banned

By Todd Starnes, Fox News Radio

The University of Tennessee bookstore in Knoxville has decided to stopping selling packages of breath mints poking fun at President Obama after a Democratic lawmaker complained.

The product is called, “Disappoint-mints” and features a blue and red picture of the president on the label

State Rep. Joe Armstrong told The Knoxville News Sentinel he found the breath mints offensive. He said a student had notified him of the mints so he decided to go to the bookstore to investigate.

He said the breath freshener was “very specifically insulting to the president” and said the university should be sensitive to what he called “politically specific products.”

The left has no sense of humor. You can bet that Democrat Rep. Armstrong never complained about the "Bush=Hitler" stuff that was ubiquitous on leftie campuses a few years ago.

The U of T bookstore should sell little boats with a figurine of Rep. Armstrong at the helm and "Democratic Party" painted on the hull. The box should read:

"Censor-ship"