I'm going to check this out tomorrow and I'll post a report about it on Friday:An Evening with Peter Singer - Lecture and discussion with the author of Animal Liberation and many other influential books on ethics and society
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Time: 7:30pm - 10:00pm
Location: J.J. McLeod Theatre, Medical Sciences Building, University of Toronto
Street: 1 King's College Circle, near Queen's Park subway
City/Town: Toronto, ON
Description
This is a free event being co-hosted by ARK II (the Animal Rights Kollective), U of T Students Against Climate Change, and Zoocheck Canada. Donations welcome. No registration required.
Moderator: Dr. Stephen Scharper, Centre for Environment, University of Toronto.
Peter Singer is a philosopher, best known for his book "Animal Liberation", a seminal work in the animal liberation movement.
He was named one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine.
He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics.
In "Animal Liberation", Singer argues against "speciesism": discrimination on the grounds that a being belongs to a certain species. He holds the interests of all beings capable of suffering to be worthy of equal consideration, and that giving lesser consideration to beings based on their having wings or fur is no more justified than discrimination based on skin color. He argues that animals should have rights based on their ability to feel pain more than their intelligence. In particular, he argues that while animals show lower intelligence than the average human, many severely mentally challenged humans show equally diminished, if not lower, mental capacity, and intelligence therefore does not provide a basis for providing nonhuman animals any less consideration than such humans.
Professor Singer has just released his new book "The Life You Can Save, Acting Now to End World Poverty". This is the right time to ask yourself: “What should I be doing to help?”
In The Life You Can Save, Singer uses ethical arguments, provocative thought experiments, illuminating examples, and case studies of charitable giving to show that our current response to world poverty is not only insufficient but ethically indefensible.
Singer contends that we need to change our views of what is involved in living an ethical life. To help us play our part in bringing about that change, he offers a seven-point plan that mixes personal philanthropy (figuring how much to give and how best to give it), local activism (spreading the word in your community), and political awareness (contacting your representatives to ensure that your nation’s foreign aid is really directed to the world’s poorest people).
In The Life You Can Save, Singer makes the irrefutable argument that giving will make a huge difference in the lives of others, without diminishing the quality of our own. This book is an urgent call to action and a hopeful primer on the power of compassion, when mixed with rigorous investigation and careful reasoning, to lift others out of despair.
See if you can bring that pig back with you.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest obstacle that governments of the Western world face in helping alleviate world poverty is a concept known as economic nationalism. We all have heard this mantra before: "why should Canada give money to sub-Saharan Africa when we have homeless people in Toronto?" At first brush it is an attractive position to many. But it ignores that the world has become borderless. Child poverty and homelessness in Canada, even on a basic needs scale as opposed to using the low-income cut-off statistics compiled by StatsCan, are problems that we cannot ignore. Those problems, however, are not isolated from poverty in Africa or elsewhere in the world. If African nations in particular had the infrastructure, educational and political systems necessary to be self-sustaining, then countries like Canada would benefit in pure dollars and cents never mind in conscience. We would spend less money in direct aid over the long term. We would spend less money in emergency situations like famine in Ethiopia or genocide in Rwanda. We would be able to export more product to African countries at market value because they could afford reasonable prices. We could start demanding better prices and save money purchasing imports from African countries like cocoa and sugar cane because we would be dealing with nations on a more level economic playing field. We would finally start receiving money on the loans that we have contributed to Africa through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Over the long term we would have more money to keep here in Canada to address our own social deficits. Just my two cents...
Thanks for the comments CKDC.
ReplyDeleteThis is an excerpt from a recent review of The Life You Can Save in the Christian Science Monitor:
Singer has studied charitable giving for 30 years, so he knows the resistance:
•Will my cash undercut vital political change?
•How do I find an efficient, honest charity?
•Why should I give if my wealthy neighbors don’t?
•What about the billions in aid that the West has already given?
•Shouldn’t we take care of our own country’s poor, before helping others?
He answers these and other objections, and steers readers toward charities matching their interests. For example, if you want your money to go toward educating girls, you can check the author’s website www.LifeYouCanSave.com, follow links, and find an effective charity that does that. (Singer favors Oxfam America, to which he will donate the proceeds from this book’s sales.)
Why should Singer care about the poor or animals, given his worldview?
ReplyDeleteTirian you just probably don't understand his worldview if you are asking a question like this.
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll admit..maybe I missed something. Perhaps you can tell me how you can justify morality in an atheistic universe? Since you and I are just complex sacks of molecules, why should we take care of animals or the poor? Since you understand Singer's worldview so well, perhaps you can elaborate?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
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ReplyDeleteTirian raises a common objection and one that has been raised by Dinesh D'Souza. Obviously, I don't speak for Singer and, even if I could, I haven't read enough of his work to give an informed explanation of his "worldview". What I can say is this: we are complex sacks of molecules that have evolved a capacity to reason, empathize and care for other sentient beings. Reciprocal altruism is one explanation. However, there also seems to be something innate is most of us that prefers what we perceive to be good (i.e. preventing suffering) over what we perceive to be bad. I reject the notion that religious beliefs in any way created compassion and concern for our fellow man. If anyone out there honestly believes that they (or anyone else) would be more likely to murder their neighbour, rape their neighbour's wife or steal their neighbour's property if they "lost their faith", they need more help than their personal God could ever provide.
ReplyDeleteSo to answer the question how do we justify morality in the atheistic universe, I would say: because of reciprocal atruism, our human capacity to reason (as exemplified by Singer's work in applied ethics) and our human desire to prevent suffering. Perhaps a better question is to ask a religiot why someone who does not believe in God, care about God or perhaps has never heard of God will usually have a strong aversion to seeing someone gratuitously beat a dog with a stick? (an example used by Singer at his lecture last night) Why would such a person leave a tip for a chambermaid who they have never met in a hotel they will never return to? Why is the solution to the Prisoner's Dilemma so simple? The answers to these questions have nothing to do with religious faith.
I still don't know how we justify morality in a theistic universe. I tend to agree with Christopher Hitchens when he criticizes those who say they wish that the idea of God was true. Hitchens believes that the reality of an all-knowing and all-powerful God would be nasty and totalitarian.
ReplyDeleteProbably there are not too many people in the world who read more of Singer's works than I did, simply because some are hard to get as his M.A. thesis (titled by the way Why Should I Be Moral?) or just were not in print at all,
ReplyDeletebut I will also not be saying anything in his name, especially with my English. (One can find what he thinks stated without doubts even in handbooks like Practical Ethics.) To continue however a little bit within your line of thought, The Atheist Missionary, I think that those are rather religious people who owe us justification of few things. Why I am supposed to follow, taking Christianity as example, some writings from ages ago put together from pieces of various, often written down later by others, stories and as some argue not even translated properly into contemporary languages? Because they carry a message which comes indirectly from unvisible GOD who is just pure love and knew what bid us to do? How good is a god who created a planet on which poor animals are suffering so much though they didn't commit any sins, did they? (To skip defences with arguments about price of giving humans free will and birth-sin passed from generation to generation). I understand that I may not be able to understand a plan set by supreme intellect, but I am not going to go beyond my limits and within them it seems more rational to not believe in it, though promise of heaven is tempting:)
O and The Atheist Missionary I am putting to your attention this: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=368323 if you didn't hear yet about it.
ReplyDelete*, I am embarrassed to say that I haven't even read Animal Liberation but I have it on order. Thank-you for drawing my attention to Wild Justice - I have ordered that as well and will review it here at a later date.
ReplyDeleteThe Atheist Missionary I did it only because seems that it will be another strong support of this that morality didn't come suddenly in full form to humans, besides if one starts to think about humans I was always wondering whether 10 commandments applies only to Homo Sapiens sapiens or to whole species of Homo Sapiens or to whole genus Homo or maybe at all whole family Hominidae? Or...?
ReplyDeleteAM said:
ReplyDelete"What I can say is this: we are complex sacks of molecules that have evolved a capacity to reason, empathize and care for other sentient beings"
Have we also evolved a capacity to irrationality, indifference, and cruelty? Or is that just the baggage left over from our ancient ancestors?
AM said:
"Reciprocal altruism is one explanation."
Yes, but not a very good one. It's nice that you enjoy the benefits of living in the West, with it's Judeo-Christian morality. However, in say, Mozambique, if you set down your briefcase it is unlikely you'll get to pick it up again. Stealing is prevalent. Perhaps they are not as evolved as others? If reciprocal altruism is your basis for morality there are a lot of cracks in your foundation. There is also little justice, since the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. made off quite well.
AM said:
"However, there also seems to be something innate is most of us that prefers what we perceive to be good (i.e. preventing suffering) over what we perceive to be bad."
Yes, it's called a *conscience*. God put it there, it's why we (in our heart of hearts) know right from wrong.
AM Said:
"I reject the notion that religious beliefs in any way created compassion and concern for our fellow man."
That's great, but where's your argument? If that is how you feel, then I reject the notion that atheist beliefs in any way created compassion and concern for our fellow man. Guess we're even...
AM Said:
"If anyone out there honestly believes that they (or anyone else) would be more likely to murder their neighbour, rape their neighbour's wife or steal their neighbour's property if they "lost their faith", they need more help than their personal God could ever provide."
Would they be less likely? If so, why?
AM Said:
"So to answer the question how do we justify morality in the atheistic universe, I would say: because of reciprocal atruism, our human capacity to reason (as exemplified by Singer's work in applied ethics) and our human desire to prevent suffering."
Reciprol altruism doesn't justify morality in an atheistic universe. It is an attempt to explain why there are morals in one, but it doesn't justify them. If all there is in the universe is the physical, why would there be morals at all? Are morals physical? I'm not saying there aren't morals, nor am I saying that atheists are immoral--indeed many of them are--but they are in spite of their worldview, not because of it.
AM Said:
"Perhaps a better question is to ask a religiot why someone who does not believe in God, care about God or perhaps has never heard of God will usually have a strong aversion to seeing someone gratuitously beat a dog with a stick?"
Let's see, an innate knowledge of right and wrong (the conscience)? Raised in a culture affected pervasively with religious moral values?
AM Said:
"Why would such a person leave a tip for a chambermaid who they have never met in a hotel they will never return to?"
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
In a materialist, atheistic universe, you cannot account for concepts, classes, induction, deduction, the mind, emotions, etc. In fact, you cannot live according to your own worldview. The fact that we are using laws of logic (another immaterial thing)to debate different positions on God's existence (or lack thereof) disproves materialistic atheism....
Tirian wrote: Yes, it's called a *conscience*. God put it there, it's why we (in our heart of hearts) know right from wrong.
ReplyDeleteI am scratching my head. I don't know where you got this notion - you must have been propagandized since birth. How is that any different than saying the Great Spaghetti monster gave us a conscience? Your God is a myth my friend and, if you disagree, show me some proof.
I like your Mozambique, Hitler and Pol Pot examples. Even if I were to agree that your Judeo-Christian morality is to credit for my ethically upstanding leanings (which, by the way, I don't), how would this is any way support the factual underpinnings of these belief systems? It wouldn't. That argument would only support the view that religion does more good than evil (again, a proposition I disagree with). I could make the same claim for belief in the Religion of the Orbiting Celestial Teapot as long as the tenets of the faith were ethically upstanding. It just doesn't get you anywhere. I will be the first to admit that Jesus of Nazareth was a morally upstanding man whose idea were light years ahead of his time. That doesn't make him able to be born of a virgin, walk on water or rise from the dead.
I thought there were people saying many similar things to those Jesus said before him and well maybe on some other planet beings knew how to use reproductive technologies long before us and helped a little bit or maybe he was some kind of robot - that would solve issues with resurrection pretty easily as well. And did any of you heard about floating? Someone said that a miracle is our ignorance.
ReplyDeleteAM Said:
ReplyDelete"I am scratching my head. I don't know where you got this notion - you must have been propagandized since birth"
Actually, I didn't become a Christian until my early twenties--at a secular university.
"Your God is a myth my friend and, if you disagree, show me some proof."
And what proof would that entail? Like you demanding that if God exists He should strike the tree outside your bedroom window with lightning? Or that he should cause your desk to levitate and spin counterclockwise for 5 minutes? You're a naturalist, so you would discount supernatural explanations--even about something you couldn't expain.
The proof for the existance of God is the impossibility of the contrary. Without God, you can't prove anything. You can't explain why things operate in a law like fashion, you can't use induction, you can't use deduction, you can't assume the uniformity of nature, you can't explain universal, invariant, or abstract entities like the laws of logic. In order to embrace atheism, you have to embrace irrationality.
AM Said:
"I will be the first to admit that Jesus of Nazareth was a morally upstanding man whose idea were light years ahead of his time. That doesn't make him able to be born of a virgin, walk on water or rise from the dead."
Why would you be the first to admit that? He said He is the Son of God and the Savior of sinners. You don't believe Him, you reject His message, you basically call Him a liar. Are you more upstanding that He is that you have become His judge rather than the other way around?
* Said:
ReplyDelete"I thought there were people saying many similar things to those Jesus said before him and well maybe on some other planet beings knew how to use reproductive technologies long before us and helped a little bit or maybe he was some kind of robot - that would solve issues with resurrection pretty easily as well. And did any of you heard about floating? Someone said that a miracle is our ignorance"
Interesting that you would acknowledge that Jesus was a robot or an alien before you would acknowledge that He is who He said He was. Do you consider aliens and robots the intellectual high ground? Amusing.
I should also ask, AM, do you concede (as Richard Dawkins does) that there is no justice in the universe? And therefore, the Hitlers of the world do, in fact, "get away with it"?
ReplyDeleteTirian wrote: "The proof for the existance of God is the impossibility of the contrary. Without God, you can't prove anything. You can't explain why things operate in a law like fashion, you can't use induction, you can't use deduction, you can't assume the uniformity of nature, you can't explain universal, invariant, or abstract entities like the laws of logic. In order to embrace atheism, you have to embrace irrationality."
ReplyDeleteSo, basically God is your default. I don't find the ontological argument convincing and it certainly doesn't support the factual truth of one word of what is contained in the Bible. You say "Without God, you can't prove anything." To me, that is as meaningless as saying that: "Without an Orbiting Celestial Teapot, you can't prove anything."
In order to embrace atheism as the most likely state of being (remembering that nobody can be 100% certain of anything, even the absence of God), I have embraced reason. If you want to argue that it is irrational not to believe that there is some kind of superior force that necessarily exists, I don't see how that superior force (whatever he/she/it may be) has to be the Judeo-Christian God. I guess I don't know enough about your particular belief system to critique it intelligently. What I can say is that all religious belief systems can't be right but they can all be wrong.
Tirian, I readily concede that there is no justice in the universe aside from that which humans (and perhaps other intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe) manage to mete out to each other. To the extent that Hitler committed great atrocities and died without being punished for them, I suppose you could say he "got away with it". There is almost certainly no afterlife. That being said, I must say that I find it amusing (and disturbing) that most mainstream Christians would have to agree that Hitler could have repented his sins on his deathbed and been welcomed with open arms at the Pearly Gates (i.e. "I killed 6 million Jews but I am truly sorry and wish to accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour"). Is that not correct? That is the ultimate get out of jail free pass.
ReplyDeleteAM said:
ReplyDelete"So, basically God is your default"
No, He is not my default position. You just asked for proof of God's existence and I offered you one line of argument. Without God you can't prove anything. The materialistic atheist has a metaphysical problem. He wants to say that all we have is what's physical, material, and in doing so he negates the preconditions of intelligibility. He has no warrant to believe that the future will be like the past. He cannot use scientific induction, deduction, nor can he assume the uniformity of nature. He therefore makes doing science impossible. Now that is not to say atheists don't use induction, etc. because they do, they just cannot account for doing so. Materialistic atheism leads to irrationality...if, in fact, the atheist was consistent in his worldview.
AM Said:
"I don't find the ontological argument convincing and it certainly doesn't support the factual truth of one word of what is contained in the Bible."
But I wasn't trying to prove the factual truth of one word of what is contained in the Bible. You asked me to prove that God exists, not that the Bible is His Word.
AM Said:
"In order to embrace atheism as the most likely state of being (remembering that nobody can be 100% certain of anything, even the absence of God), I have embraced reason"
Is it more probable that everything "just happened", and that life came from non-life? Doesn't sound like *reason* to me.
AM Said:
"If you want to argue that it is irrational not to believe that there is some kind of superior force that necessarily exists, I don't see how that superior force (whatever he/she/it may be) has to be the Judeo-Christian God."
Christian Theism is the only theism that makes sense of science, math, architecture, art, metaphysics, epistemology, etc etc. If you closely examine other religions you will see this is so. For example, in Hinduism the material universe is an illusion and all is One. However, that metaphysic doesn't account for universal, invariant, abstract entities like the laws of logic (which we are utilizing at this moment, otherwise discussion would be useless).
AM Said:
"What I can say is that all religious belief systems can't be right but they can all be wrong."
One of them can be right, and the others wrong. All non religious belief systems can be wrong as well. You see, with atheism, if you're wrong--you lose. And if you're right--you lose. It's a no-win proposition.
AM Said:
ReplyDelete"I must say that I find it amusing (and disturbing) that most mainstream Christians would have to agree that Hitler could have repented his sins on his deathbed and been welcomed with open arms at the Pearly Gates."
This would be true in theory because God is merciful. However, there has only been one deathbed conversion recorded in all of Scripture, the thief on the cross. While such a conversion is possible, it is unlikely. Either way, there is justice. Punishment of the unrepentant sinner, or punishment that was meted out upon the Savior of sinners (on the cross).
Atheism, on the other hand, can only offer a pitiless, unjust, indifferent universe with nothing at the end but darkness. Not very promising, is it? Doesn't add a lot to "the meaning of life"...
I would recommend the study of the works of Alvin Plantinga (University of Notre Dame), and those of Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, and C.S. Lewis, if you're interested in getting a better understanding of what I've only skimmed the surface of here.
Thanks for the discussion.
Tirian, first of all I think that one can't take what is in the bible as it was exactly, for many reasons, also this one that witnesses of events are making notorious mistakes if asked about them only some time after, people are able to tell you in details about things which were not there at all - there is huge literature on this now and well one physicist for example told me a story of a figure of Jesus's mother which was apearing above the church in city we live in, everyone could see it - including him, at closer invastigation it turned out that those were just some gases which gathered there from nearby factory as one of machines in it was leaking and they were shining in sun, once they fix the machine there was no figure any more, so... yes I am quicker to belive in beings on other planets what with our growing knowledge about universe seems pretty possible than in god.
ReplyDelete*
ReplyDeleteWhat you're missing is God's superintendence of the recording of the events that took place. You are judging based on your experience of how people relay information about events, etc., but the Bible is a unique book. It is not like any other book in its claims and subject matter. So, because you have thrown out the possibility of God's overseeing the inscripturation of what He wanted to communicate to us, you have been reduced to embracing silliness. You're doing the same thing you (most likely) accuse Christians of doing...
AM,
ReplyDeleteIf you are looking to engage Christians in discussion and debate, www.triablogue.blogspot.com will be of interest to you. At least you'll be engaged with apologists who know their stuff.
Take care,
You know Tirian I was brought in very religious home, but the reason I moved away from it is that it just frigthen me how certain those people are able to be in what they belive and what they are able to do for it, here you just call me silly, but I saw much worse thing and history shows example of everything including killing.
ReplyDelete*
ReplyDeleteThe bad behavior of some people who profess faith in Christ has nothing to do with the truth claims of Christianity. The Bible teaches the fallen nature of humanity, so it ought not to surprise you when *religious* people do bad things. At least you would have a basis for condemning their bad deeds. With secular atheism, you can't really condemn anything...
Tirian it doesn't surprise me when religious (or atheist or agnosic or so) people do bad things, we all do, I had something else in mind.
ReplyDelete