A Critique of Peter Singer
by Benjamin Studebaker
I had an interesting lecture today in which Peter Singer came up. Singer is an interesting philosopher in so far as he is, like me, a utilitarian and a consequentialist, but I nonetheless find myself from time to time in conflict with him. Today I seek to identify where precisely Singer and I differ, and why one should agree with me rather than with him.
So, in the context of the lecture I was in, Singer’s argument concerning animal ethics was the one put forward. As the lecturer described it, Singer’s argument goes something like this:
- Interests should receive equal consideration.
- Farming practices cause animals to suffer only in order to satisfy the palates of human beings.
- Animals have a major interest in avoiding suffering.
- Human beings have only a minor interest in satisfying their palates.
- Sacrificing a major interest of a being in order to satisfy a minor interest of another being violates the principle of equal consideration of interests.
- Therefore, some farming practices violate the principle of equal consideration of interests.
- Farming practices can be effectively changed only by stopping eating meat.
- Therefore, people should stop eating meat
There are lots of objections to Singer that pick at various small details of his thinking, but I think the problem runs deeper and applies not just to any given argument from Singer, but to his system of thinking as a whole. The trouble with Singer’s conception is that he has misconceived what an “interest” is. For Singer, interests are matters of preference satisfaction, where a preference is whatever a being desires. This variation of utilitarianism is termed “preference utilitarianism”. Many casual critics of utilitarianism assume all utilitarians to be preference utilitarians, but it is not so. The problem with preference utilitarianism is that it takes interests and desires to be synonymous.
Imagine that Jill wants to have sex with Bob. This is a desire and a preference that Jill wishes satisfied. What Jill doesn’t know, however, is that Bob has HIV. If Jill has sex with Bob, she will get the disease. I think it is self-evident that it is not in Jill’s interest to get HIV, but Jill does not realise that HIV will result from the satisfaction of her desire to have sex with Bob. As a result, Jill’s desires and preferences conflict with her interests. This presents the problem of ignorance for the preference utility position. People do not have perfect knowledge about what is good for them; they sometimes desire things that will lead to bad consequences not merely for others but even for themselves. There can be disagreement about what’s a being’s interests are, but that disagreement exists not because interests are inherently subjective, but because of imperfect knowledge about what consequences result from our actions. All a desire or preference really is is one’s own personal opinion about one’s own interests. It is by no means necessarily a correct opinion. It can be grounded in ignorance or deeply misinformed. More interestingly, one need not have an opinion for objective facts to exist. I may not have any desires, but I may nonetheless have interests. This opens some doors.
Singer argues that because animals desire not to have pain that they have interests in the same way that people do, but this is a result of the false equivalence between desire and interest, between opinion and fact. What does it really mean to have an interest? If a being has interests, then it is possible for good or bad things to happen to it. Generally, if something is alive, we say that its death is not in its interest. It does not matter if the death comes with or without physical pain or with or without the being’s self-awareness of death, it is beneficial to a bacterium to live and harmful to a bacterium to die. Life is in the interest of the living. There are exceptions to this, of course–one can imagine a being so depressed and so miserable that death is a form of release (though one could argue that this is always a false opinion on the part of the suicidal individual) –in cases of terminal illness, disability, or severe pain, however, I don’t think such an argument would hold. In any case, very stupid creatures, like bacteria, do not have the psychological capacity to have existential crises. It is safe to assume that death is never in their interest.
Now, one could argue back and say that if a being does not feel direct physical pleasure or pain, if it is not self-aware of whether it lives or dies, how can its existence be in its own interest? Individually, perhaps it cannot, but from an evolutionary standpoint, even the stupidest organism exists to replicate and continue forward the process of natural selection so that more sophisticated organisms can result from it. When the very first organisms came into being on earth, the organisms from which every person and species descend, it was in all of our collective interest in perpetuity that said organisms survived and reproduced. We could not be here if they did not. Evolution means that stupid organisms are necessary for the creation of more sophisticated organisms. Even if the reader does not think we can derive the interest of the less sophisticated organism from itself, we can derive it from the organism’s evolutionary potential to create higher order life–a potential that every organism on the planet still has. For if we could evolve from these critters, other highly intelligent species could evolve from them as well, given sufficient time.
If we accept this argument, then interests are not confined merely to humans, but they are not confined merely to animals either. Plants have interests; bacteria have interests; protists have interests; viruses, even, have interests, in so far as they all have purposes and functions. They may not be conscious of these functions, but they nonetheless have them and are to be considered successful in so far as they perform them and unsuccessful in so far as they do not. Here’s where this particular argument from Singer concerning animal ethics really gets undermined. If my conception of interests is better than Singer’s, and I think it is, then Singer’s central premise, that “interests should receive equal consideration” looks extremely weak. If I contract a bacterial infection, it would seem ridiculous to say that my interest in surviving the disease needs to balanced against the interest of the bacteria in performing its functions of replication and evolution. If we follow Singer all the way here, the fact that there are millions of bacteria and only one of me would imply that I should lose the argument. A single bacterium’s interests would have to be taken to be equal to mine, so the interests of an entire body’s worth of them would seem rather to countervail me. I may not be morally obliged to allow the bacteria to kill me (if you, like me, do not think an organism is ever obliged to self-harm), but doctors certainly would not be obligated to help me, and might even be obligated to stop me from helping myself. The principle of equal concern for all beings with interests seems false; there’s something about human beings that makes them count for more than bacteria.
Singer maintains that the difference is capacity to feel pleasure and pain–that’s what sets animals apart from other organisms. So let’s say that this is the case–maybe non-animal life has interests, but those interests do not count morally because they are not aware of success or failure via the pleasure/pain mechanism. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we change the deadly bacterial infection a little bit. Say that each individual bacterium is given an intense understanding of what it means to suffer. In every other respect, it remains an intellectually vacuous bacterium. However, when you kill the bacterium, it will know precisely what you are doing and it will suffer intensely. Imagine that when you kill a bacterium, it experiences the human equivalent of being crucified and set on fire. Does this in any way diminish your determination to fight off a bacterial infection? I don’t see why it would. Experiencing suffering does not make the bacterium more valuable to us. Come to think of it, what does make something valuable to us? Its ability to contribute, its capacity for social benevolence, something like that, surely? The problem with the bacterium, even the pain-experiencing bacterium, is that it does not do anything for us. We gain nothing from treating it morally as if it were a person.
In order to matter morally, suffering is not what matters. Contributing is. People matter because people contribute to society. No one individual necessarily contributes to each and every one of our individual lives, but someone gets some benefit from them, even if it’s just the joy of knowing they’re alive, as might be the case for the parents of mentally deficient children. No one cares about infectious bacteria, and no one would care about them even if they could feel pain like we do. The only reason anyone cares about animals is because some people like them. It is has nothing to do with any inherent moral standing that animals have and everything to do with their desire that animals not suffer for their own personal satisfaction, because they find animals cute or enjoy knowing they exist or what have you. Most animals matter morally only to the extent that the people who care about them matter morally, no further.
I do have one considered category of exceptions, however. There are some animals that perhaps could be said to contribute to some degree beyond merely appealing to people’s compassion:
- Industrial animals–work horses, mules, donkeys, elephants. If an animal contributes its labour to the economy, that is good enough reason to see it included in our society morally. Since these animals do not benefit from wages, we can give them that much.
- Service animals–seeing eye dogs, rescue dogs, undersea mine detecting dolphins, pets that give genuine psychological comfort, and so on. These animals improve the productive efficiency of people by improving their quality of life or protecting them from harm, contribute in a genuine way like the industrial animals, and are worthy of moral consideration as well.
- Agricultural animals–meat/glue horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, sheep, and so on. These animals derive their usefulness entirely from their being eaten or having pieces of them broken off and used industrially, however, so they cannot be taken more seriously morally than can wheat or rice.
- Research animals–mice, non-human primates, the various animals used by scientists to conduct research. These animals derive their usefulness from processes that are inherently harmful, so while we should do our best to minimise the harms they endure, the usefulness from which they derive that consideration is itself dependent upon their suffering.
Update:
I have since written an additional piece on Singer that deepens and in some places supersedes this one, entitled “A New Critique of Peter Singer“. In particular, it dispenses with the claim I made regarding how “interests” should be conceptualized. While I still think that it is possible to have interests without being aware them, I now agree with Singer that these interests must necessarily consist of concrete benefits and harms, albeit potentially future ones. However, I still agree with the claims I made beginning with “so let’s say this is the case”. It is the argument after that point that I deepen in the new piece.
Singer is changing his view of preference utilitarianism. See, in particular, the final chapter of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Singer-Christian-Ethics-Polarization/dp/0521149339/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1362061965&sr=1-1
Hmm, is it Singer altering his view, or is the author of this book trying to draw a relationship that Singer himself might resist? In any event, it’s something interesting to look at–I’ll check it out, thanks!
Reblogged this on Time for Action.
Thank you for sharing it.
Happy to share information to a wider network.
[…] If those who want to eat conventional food are sufficiently determined such that they would emigrate from countries that taxed or restricted its consumption, carbon emissions would be transferred rather than reduced, global Soylent supply would not increase nor would its price lower in poor areas, and the vegetarian/vegan argument has its own issues as I have discussed previously. […]
[…] A Critique of Peter Singer […]
Thanks for sharing!
[…] our utility is sufficient to deny animals extinction. I’ve made the reciprocity argument in reference to animals before. So if you agree with me on the necessity of being a current or potential contributor, does the […]
[…] say that people kill bugs because they haven’t thought about it. I have written a series of different posts about animal welfare in which I have given the value of the lives of animals, including bugs, […]
[…] Do we have duties to animals? […]
I think you are doing Singer a fairly serious disservice here. The problem you illustrate with the example of Jill and her ignorance of Bob’s HIV is not a problem limited to Singer and his preference Utilitarianism but to most kinds of consequentialism. However, that aside, I have to say I disagree with you. I think your argument begins to fail when you begin the main thrust of your argument, writing: “Generally, if something is alive, we say that its death is not in its interest. It does not matter if the death comes with or without physical pain or with or without the being’s self-awareness of death, it is beneficial to a bacterium to live and harmful to a bacterium to die.” This is a point with which Singer would absolutely disagree and cannot simply be taken as read as you do. Indeed, it seems to me, the reverse is (obviously) true and that generally we would not say that a bacterium has interests any more than we would an inanimate object – to speak of interests in relation to non-sentient things is nigh on meaningless. Mere basis for function does not constitute an interest. That life is simply necessary for the bacterium to function represents no more of an interest for it than a table has an interest in level ground in order for it to stand. Your claim that “viruses, even, have interests, in so far as they all have purposes and functions” could further be said of any number of inanimate tools. For this reason I would say that your conception of interests cannot be said to be better than Singer’s. Your claim then, in your scenario where you are plagued by a bacterial infection, that, “if we follow Singer all the way here, the fact that there are millions of bacteria and only one of me would imply that I should lose the argument,” is manifestly untrue, not least because it is not Singer you are following but yourself. Singer, quoting Bentham, writes ““The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’” and thus can easily and consistently say that he would have absolutely no moral qualm with overcoming a bacterial infection.
I pass over your analysis of evolutionary interests because it seems rather confused to me and if you seriously felt that such an argument were reasonable, then, even using your notion that what matters is contributing to society, you would yourself have a strong reason not to kill any life because of the potential of its evolutionary descendants to make such contributions. Your final paragraph notes that Singer maintains that it is the capacity to feel pleasure and pain which makes a being’s interests morally considerable and I think you simply haven’t done enough to challenge this point. What you suggest is “that we change the deadly bacterial infection a little bit. Say that each individual bacterium is given an intense understanding of what it means to suffer.” I must admit I found faintly amusing your suggestion that giving the bacteria sentience represented changing the scenario “a little bit,” particularly when whether or not suffering mattered is central to the matter at hand. My problems then with the example are:
1 the absurdity and (as far as I can imagine) impossibility of sentient bacteria clouds our judgment. It may be that you don’t find this case any more persuasive simply because you know that bacteria do not suffer and cannot imagine them doing so.
2 it isn’t at all obvious that Singer (and/or everyone else) would think in the same way as you. In fact, if it were a choice between either, many animals suffering and dying and his survival, or, the many animals surviving and his suffering and death, there being no other variables or consequences, he would surely choose death for himself provided that the many also had the capacity for greater future pleasure than him. (And this doesn’t seem counter-intuitive to me, at least not obviously so)
Thus far I’ve felt you’ve not quite dealt with Singer properly; the rest I outright disagree with. When you write “experiencing suffering does not make the bacterium more valuable to us,” I think you conflate Singer’s belief “that animals’ interests ought to be given equal consideration with the like interests of humans” and some nebulous idea of value. Indeed, this betrays what seems to be your position, that something only deserves moral consideration as long as it does something for you or society more broadly. Apart from seeming rather too close to a kind of ‘might is right’ attitude to morality for my liking, it leaves me feeling rather uncomfortable about certain cases I could imagine. A man shipwrecked on an island, thought by all the world to be dead, and with no chance of ever being rescued or discovered would no longer seem to have any moral value to you. Or if an alien race were to colonize Earth, being so vastly and incomprehensibly more advanced and sophisticated than us that we could not contribute to their society at all or even communicate with them, would they be immoral to kill us all? It would seem from what you write, no. And intuitively I find that hard to accept.
This has turned into something of a ramble. (Sorry). I don’t even really agree with Singer. Cool piece.
Interesting thoughts! Thank you for engaging so much with my work. Here’s how I would respond:
There are other kinds of utilitarianism and consequentialism more broadly that leave room for beings to be mistaken about their own interests. Singer’s certainly not alone, but he’s not unopposed either.
There’s a fundamental difference between a bacterium and a hammer in that, without any outside encouragement or intervention, the bacterium will, all on its own, carry out its life and reproductive processes. These functions are intrinsic to the bacterium by nature. By contrast, a hammer’s functions are assigned to it by human beings. A hammer has been designed to fulfill a human function, and requires a human hand to operate it. A hammer will not on its own engage in hammering. Even viruses reproduce of their own accord. A virus has a purpose that is its own, that has not merely been assigned to it by another. Even if it has no serious self-awareness about that purpose, it still carries it out independently.
Singer does not follow Bentham in considering pleasures and pains–he embraces preference utilitarianism and focuses on beings’ interests/preferences. By “can they suffer?”, Singer means, in contradistinction with Bentham “can their preferences be disappointed?” rather than “can they experience pain?”. Singer fails to see a distinction between preferences and interests. However, if beings can be mistaken about their own interests, Singer is forced to choose either preferences or interests, because both cannot be pursued concurrently. I presented the AIDS case to illustrate why he really ought not to follow preferences, and my claim about the bacterium follows were he to follow interests.
If you would prefer a case that is less counter-intuitive than the bacterium, what if say, I encounter a pack of starving wolves. We would all agree that wolves experience pain. There is only one of me and there is an entire pack of hungry wolves. Am I obliged to allow them to eat me? I submit as evidence that most people are not sympathetic to the view that they should give up and let the wolves win the audience reaction to the Liam Neeson film The Grey, in which Liam Neeson fights a wolf pack. I have not read or heard any criticism or opinion on this movie that asserts that Liam Neeson was morally wrong to fight the wolves because they outnumbered him and their preferences were weightier, but that is the implication of Singer’s view.
You are right that my own view is one of reciprocity–a being gains moral value insofar as it is willing and capable of returning services rendered. A man shipwrecked on an island is not presently contributing, but he may nonetheless be willing and capable of doing so, such that it would be in the social interest to rescue him. It is also not likely that he is the reason he is shipwrecked–more likely, a mistake was made due to the ship’s captain’s incompetence, or a storm wrecked the ship, and in either case society was deprived of the man’s productivity due to causes that are not attributable to him and that he should not have to suffer for.
I’m not seeing how this equates to “might is right”–if a being is willing and capable of reciprocating with me and I spurn him anyway, or deny him the opportunity to contribute, I would be wrong to do so.
I do agree that if we were to encounter an alien race that was so advanced that it could not make any use of us at all, even as slaves or pack-animals, that saw us as parasites or bacteria, that alien race would not have any reason to show us moral concern, though we would be entitled to resist that race insofar as we were able. I think the case likely makes you uncomfortable because, like my bacterium example, it is highly implausible. We are the most capable species we know of, and it is unthinkable that there would be a species so much more advanced that we would be that useless to them. The capacity necessary for this to be so is incomprehensible to us, and we cannot really believe it could exist.
Hmmm interesting. I’ve only just realized how old this post was and I’m sorry to be dredging it up!
I certainly agree that there are kinds of consequentialism that can make allowances for ignorance and error, though this isn’t universally accepted. I simply meant that this criticism isn’t one of Singer alone and is really only a problem to preference utilitarianism as a decision making procedure rather than as a system of ethics.
“There’s a fundamental difference between a bacterium and a hammer in that, without any outside encouragement or intervention, the bacterium will, all on its own, carry out its life and reproductive processes” – this is evidently true but I don’t see why this should affect whether or not something qualifies as having an interest and I’m not sure that you’ve provided a reason. Certainly you might say that a tool’s function is its own but it’s purpose is that of its creator, but I would argue both that a bacterium also lacks a purpose, in that this obviously implies either intention or design, and also that there are innumerable natural processes performed by inanimate objects, without intervention, which we might also describe as performing a function. I simply don’t think that we can seriously describe any of these things as having interests.
‘Singer does not follow Bentham in considering pleasures and pains–he embraces preference utilitarianism and focuses on beings’ interests/preferences. By ‘can they suffer?’, Singer means, in contradistinction with Bentham ‘can their preferences be disappointed?’ rather than ‘can they experience pain?'” I think this is a fairly fundamental misinterpretation of Singer’s position: by “can they suffer?” he very precisely does mean “can they experience pain.” Singer does embrace preference utilitarianism but he without doubt considers pleasures and pains and he doesn’t quote Bentham to draw any such distinction or contradiction. Shortly after quoting Bentham, he makes his position clearer: “The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way.” I’m inclined to agree with him and it seems meaningless, to me, to describe destroying a virus as an affront to its interests. Singer’s moral position follows from this that “if a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration” and personally I don’t think you challenge this adequately.
Ha! I have to say that I haven’t seen the film but obviously it’s deficient as an example, though I get your point. Critics clearly would prefer to see Liam Neeson fighting off the wolves successfully for reasons other than those moral but we could make a number of addenda to the example. The wolves would have to be certain to die if they did not eat him, certain to survive if they did, and there would have to be a stipulation that there weren’t other people with preferences dependent on Neeson’s survival. If we were to imagine a man without relations of any kind and unknown to everyone, presently and into the future, and that his dying would ensure the survival of the otherwise doomed wolves, noting that being killed by wolves would be an egregiously gruesome way to die and that the man would experience the psychological suffering of facing his own mortality in ways the wolves would not, Singer might (I presume) conclude that the man’s death would be moral. I’m not sure I agree with Singer but I’m equally unsure that it’s obvious that this is unsound thinking. We might well be uncomfortable with such a choice for cultural and evolutionary reasons rather than moral ones.
“Might is right” may have been an unfortunate turn of phrase particularly with its other overtones, but I only meant that considering something only because of its capacity to do something for you seems fairly callous and intuitively, at least to me, immoral. Would you indulge a man who took pleasure in killing or even torturing any animal incapable of contributing to society?
“I do agree that if we were to encounter an alien race that was so advanced that it could not make any use of us at all, even as slaves or pack-animals, that saw us as parasites or bacteria, that alien race would not have any reason to show us moral concern” – Surely you’re position goes further than this, that if our extermination might confer some benefit upon them, they ought not show us moral concern? If I might also borrow a film as an example, I haven’t yet encountered anyone who rooted for the human invaders in Avatar. I don’t think my discomfort is the result of incomprehensibility. It seems to me rather as you say yourself that “there’s something about human beings that makes them count for more than bacteria.”
Oh, no trouble at all, I’m glad my pieces are still being read, and being drawn to them is an opportunity to refresh myself on my position and possibly to alter it.
I suppose I don’t see what’s special about a being having awareness that its goals are being thwarted, or even having awareness that its goals are its own. Rather, it seems sufficient to say that being has implicit goals, even when unacknowledged, and that when these goals are disappointed, the being’s interests are violated. I am drawn to this view because oftentimes even human beings are not fully aware of their own goals and interests, and are often harmed without being aware of it. If say, my boss considers promoting me, but, upon talking with a colleague, chooses not to, the colleague has harmed me even if I never know that this was a possibility or that the colleague is the reason it didn’t come to pass. A denied interest does not necessarily translate into raw physical suffering or mental anguish.
Also, even if people are aware of their goals, are they necessarily any more responsible for them than bacteria are? We are by nature driven to do various things–eat, drink, reproduce, and so on, and bacteria are similarly driven to carry out life processes. Does the mere fact that we are aware in some especially sophisticated way make it more important when we fail to survive than when a bacterium does? I agree that bacteria are not morally important, and that there is some reason for this, but I don’t think it’s man’s capacity to suffer, but man’s willingness to cooperate with others.
We think it’s okay, for instance, to kill other men in war, even though we know that these men experience pain. We do this because we have found it impossible to get those other men to cooperate with us, and so instead we find ourselves in competition. In the same way, it is okay for the lion to eat the gazelle because the lion cannot form a cooperative relationship with the gazelle, or vice versa. If capacity to feel pain alone was the issue, then human beings would seem to incur some obligation to protect animals from predators, and to provide those predators with an alternative food source. That seems unreasonable to me.
It seems the main problem with Singer is that he doesn’t make arguments. Just pronouncements. In the grand Enlightenment tradition, he’s forsaken philosophy because raw moralizing is so much easier and more fun.
[…] while back, I wrote a piece called “A Critique of Peter Singer“, one of my more popular pieces on moral theory. Since I wrote that piece, I’ve spent […]