Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer, ACis an Australian moral philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book, Animal Liberation, a canonical text in animal liberation theory, and his essay Famine, Affluence, and Morality, a key text...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 July 1946
CountryAustralia
christian islamic ethical-issues
When you look at food as an ethical issue in the Christian tradition, you don't find very much about it. You don't find, as you do in the Jewish or Islamic or Hindu traditions, a lot of restrictions saying you can eat this but you can't eat that. But what you do find is the idea that gluttony is a sin and that it's something that we ought to be ashamed of.
thinking ethical-issues intuition
I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.
thinking issues leader
In a situation where many national leaders do the same thing and look out for national interests, and with an issue like global warming, you're likely to get no solution, so I think you have to have some kind of ethical trump on some of those issues.
running thinking ethical-issues
My work is based on the assumption that clarity and consistency in our moral thinking is likely, in the long run, to lead us to hold better views on ethical issues.
war reality issues
In my world of the people who study war and defense issues, we simply did not talk about robotics. We do not talk about it because it's seen as mere science fiction. It's cold, hard, metallic reality.
animal issues support
Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.
issues looks fiction
History is not going to look kindly on us if we just keep our head in the sand on armed autonomous robotics issue because it sounds too science fiction.
decisions face hold immense individual society struggle technical together
It's not going to be the individual ... technical (public health) decisions that are going to hold our society together in the face of an immense struggle with an influenza pandemic,
lack missing numbers spending stunning wounded
The lack of numbers - missing on everything from how much we are spending to how many are being killed or wounded - is just stunning for this day and age.
allowed britain changing decide draining environment individual influence islam key poison radical success trying whether
Britain has to decide whether it's trying to influence the individual or influence the environment that has allowed this radicalism to exist. The key to success is changing the environment to make radical Islam completely unacceptable. . . . It's not just draining the swamp. You have to poison the sea.
australian-philosopher competing compromise ethics itself rather true within
So the compromise itself is within ethics rather than between competing ethics, and I think that's true in geo-political concerns.
becomes consider crisis ethical fairness glue hold intense key lesson major pandemic processes questions relation sars shared threatened time together values
A shared set of ethical values is the glue that can hold us together during an intense crisis. A key lesson from the SARS outbreak is that fairness becomes more important during a time of crisis and confusion. And the time to consider these questions and processes in relation to a threatened major pandemic is now.
access disease far life people slowly universal
More people with HIV/Aids are getting inexpensive anti-retroviral drugs, and their life expectancy has increased, but universal access is still far off, and the disease is still spreading, if more slowly than before.
australian-philosopher global national people purely realise wanting
As we realise that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest.