That's actually pretty awesome, and some interesting reading to boot!

Need a few good horse tf stories

... in ethics textbooks, to boot! XD

#weirdethicalquestionsI'vethoughtaboutovermuchly

An interesting idea from Mr. Peter Singer only in the respect that it involves werehorses. His thought otherwise on the value of life has led him to conclude that for most people life isn't worth very much instead of recognizing that life is sacred because it is life. He tends to look at some nebulous concept called "quality of life" and that can lead to severe abuses against people like the elderly and the sick who cannot stand up for themselves.

Also, the title "Practical Ethics" implies that he isn't interested in Ethics for its own sake (that is, to know what is right and what is wrong), but for the sake of making moral questions subservient to some other "good' and that can be exceedingly dangerous.

While not discussing werehorses, there is a wonderfully erudite passage in the first chapter of G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" that ends with the line (I paraphrase) "The best compliment you can give a man is to call him a horse." You might find that also quite to your liking.

Dominus tecum

Ohhh, rest assured that he does not at all ignores the questions you raise! His object in this chapter is to explore the question of taking animal lives from a utilitarian standpoint (he discusses abortion and euthanasia in chapters we didn't read), and he is trying to develop an ethic that is not speciesist; that is, he doesn't want human lives to be valued merely because they are Homo sapiens, but for certain traits that influence the amount and intensity of pleasure and pain felt surrounding death (for example, consciousness of oneself as a being with a continuing and past existence is crucial for him). The werehorse thought experiment was to explore whether there would be any possible way to evaluate whether one species' life would be inherently more valuable than another; for that purpose he creates this neutral state between human and horse. However, the chapter continues for several pages after this; were you to read it, you'd get a better picture!

And for him "Practical Ethics" is more about making people consider the ethical basis of their decisions, but not be paralyzed by the many questions that can plague academic ethicists. Thus, even while he is an academic utilitarian, he doesn't expect people to go around calculating the pleasure/pain consequences of their every choice from a "critical" posture; they should, instead, adopt useful "intuitive" general principles that yield morally satisfactory results in the majority of cases. Hence, "practical" and not only "theoretical" ethics ;)

And thanks for the recommendation! I've read a little Chesterton an would love to read more :)

That is true.
But you need to know the background horror stories of the Singer debates - an example is:
Singer somewhere wrote "an adult guinea pig has a more advanced consciousness and awareness than a one month old human", because the brain is more developed - Brain development in relation to the mind.

So it might be from a non-speciesistic point that if there is a situation where an adult guinea pig or a one month old human is in a burning building - to rescue the guinea pig first.
That is horrifying for a human cored moral system, in which animals are objects you can kill or eat or even worth.
So the propaganda said: "Singer won't rescue a baby, but a lifeless object instead (animal in this kind of thinking of human cored systems) or maybe a chair?! Who knows!"
To even worth: "Singer tries to kill babies! OUR BABIES! *screaming and running around foolishly*

<- Something like that.

My issue with Peter Singer is not that his conclusions based on his premises aren't logical in that sense. His philosophy isn't really that hard to follow in many ways. I'm pretty sure I've read some of his material in class before, but it has been quite some time so I might have only read others who agreed with him. I do think that his conclusions lead to several inherent self-contradictions and that using the "quality of life" as a basis to define ethical actions leads to monstrous choices. The premise of his that I disagree with is that our being is coterminus with our consciousness. From this he deduces that the quality of life of all humans and animals is dependent on how much we suffer or do not suffer. And by this, in Practical Ethics he goes on to argue that the parents of Down Syndrome babies and other children born with defects ought to be free to kill those children within 28 days after birth; that is only one of the things he has stated. In Rethinking Life and Death he says:

"We may not want a child to start on life's uncertain voyage if the prospects are clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage in the voyage, we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our effort into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning."

Given that life is full of surprises, who can say that their lives are ever on certain footing? This sort of view would have preferred to kill Helen Keller or any number of disabled who are born every year and whose courage and determination surprise us all every year. This sort of view sees suffering as so horrific that death is preferable. And for Singer, an atheist, death means the cessation of consciousness, which also for Singer means the cessation of being. Thus, when one measures the value of life by its "quality" one is reduced to concluding that it is better not to exist at all than it is to suffer. But we find deeper meaning and strength in ourselves through suffering. That is one of the observable qualities of the human condition, and it is one reason why I believe Peter Singer is horribly wrong. (Also one must consider that many who start out life with all the advantages in the world can turn into horrific monsters too; nothing is guaranteed).

As an ironic side note, Singer attempts to eliminate discrimination based on species, sex, etc... from ethical consideration. Yet his 'quality of life' valuation brings with it even more invidious means of discrimination. His reviling of those with Down Syndrome, calling mentally challenged vegetables, and noting that not everything the Nazis did was wrong were all present in the first edition of Practical Ethics but were removed from the second.

A further irony is that in Practical Ethics, concerning the infant child, Singer advises us to "put aside feelings based on its small, helpless, and - sometimes - cute appearance" that we might look at the more ethically relevant aspects such as its quality of life. But he has already told us that our quality of life can be understood in its relationship to suffering. Therefore, he advises us to make ethical decisions by not using the emotions, in order to reduce suffering which detracts from our happiness. We must not use emotions to enjoy emotions! While I am sure he would never put it as such, it is essentially what he suggests.

So in summation, I am not at all surprised that you never had to read the section of his work dealing with abortion or euthanasia. They coldly proceed from his "quality of life" ethic, his denial that there is any way to differentiate existential value between species, and his mistaking consciousness for being.

Nevertheless, I fully support more Werehorses! And as for Chesterton, I heartily recommend reading both Heretics and Orthodoxy in addition to The Everlasting Man. One furry artist was even doing a furry comic adaption of his book The Man Who was Thursday but sadly she lost steam on that.

Dominus tecum

"he goes on to argue that the parents of Down Syndrome babies and other children born with defects ought to be free to kill those children within 28 days after birth; that is only one of the things he has stated. In Rethinking Life and Death he says:"

That text was based on a not commonly Down Syndrome baby, a child without a connection between mouth and stomach.
(Practical Example) Kuhse vs. Singer.

So it is not relevant for the rest of the text you suggest - and that was the reason it was dropped. He later admit, that he didn't deal with the topic enough to make a final decision.

"view would have preferred to kill Helen Keller" -

This for example is another point.
Actually a baby is not the person Helen Keller.

The personality of a human being develops in a bigger timespan.
That means No "MatthiasRat" or "Silao" for example are really "born" that way. "We" as "Persons with all awareness" were never babies or childs. That would be a contradiction.
"I" is a state that develops by time without a final point (we still change every day), The State "I" is a result of a development of the brain to abstract thinking level in later ages. It is not there from the time a baby is born.

Given that Peter Singer said the he would have supported the parents of disabled people protesting one of his talks in killing those people while they were infants, I think that your attempt to weaken his statement only obfuscates rather than enlightens the subject of his thought.

You make the same mistake that Singer does in regards to what constitutes a person. You mistake consciousness for being. This is not an uncommon mistake, but it is still a mistake. You will note that I said Singer's thought is a very logical working out of his assumptions. I think his conclusions are at variance with actual human experience which really ought to lead one to question his assumptions. And that is just one of many reasons I reject his thinking.

Dominus tecum

1.) Parents are an organization which can be in opposite of an individual/"being" in that case, like a baby for example.
-> The state of the brain development is not relevant for that connection.
-> If we talk about the responsibility and power of that organization (accidentally parents) over an individual (that is accidentally the child) it is the practical topic I talked before and which I criticized.

2.) You go back to "being" which is not clean defined.
(I used individual to all existence that is basically able to feel or suffer. (independent from form, weigh, origin or development of the brain etc.)
(also a matter of law theory) [natural or legal person] in law -
I'm interested in your definition of "being" and "person".

1. This does not change the prescription that Singer made for such children based on a physical condition. That is what I criticized and for which Singer rightly receives criticism. I don't think your distinction matters because it only matters if "quality of life" is the criterion for the worth of life (and I vehemently disagree that such should be the criterion). Further, it is a distinction which is bridged very easily (and often) in practical terms by those with power over others, something you say Singer did not want. He and others (Derek Humphrey for instance) pursued the philosophical justifications for others making what they call a voluntary good into a societal good, and thus a compulsory good. I know that in the state of Oregon which allows for physician assisted suicide, several elderly patients have been told that the government and insurance will not cover life-saving treatments, but it would cover euthanasia; at present at least this has caused a firestorm of condemnation, but it is not a surprising end result of a philosophy that states death is better than suffering.

2. Ultimately, Being is "what" one is. I think on that we agree; we merely disagree with the form that "what" takes. I happen to be a Realist and not an Idealist. Singer and many other modern philosophers are Idealists in that they believe without conscious thought there cannot be any Being to speak of. I believe that Being precedes consciousness as without my Being, I could never have thought in the first place. Without there existing objects outside of my Being that I can sense, I cannot proceed from them to having thoughts about them. I find Etienne Gilson's critique of Idealism in "Methodical Realism" to be well worth investigating regardless of whether you agree or not with Realism. As for a clean definition of "Being", I note that this is something that philosophers have struggled with for over two thousand years. I do not have a clean definition for you as such because I am still trying to understand this myself! I am a being, that is, I am something that exists. I can act, and I have the potency within my being for a variety of actions. Consciousness is not my essence merely one of my attributes.

For another critique of the Idealist position, one approachable to laymen, I recommend Peter Kreeft's "Socrates meets Descartes". What applies in the critique there also applies to future Idealist philosophers such as Kant, Sartre, and of course, Peter Singer.

Thank you for the discussion. However I do not have the time to pursue this any further and will not post any more detailed replies. If you wish to get a sense of where I stand, reading those two books I mentioned would be a good start.

Dominus tecum

A lot of themes:

" because it only matters if "quality of life" is the criterion for the worth of life (and I vehemently disagree that such should be the criterion)."

It is the main point for the practical example Singer and Kuhse talked about -
The example of the down syndrom child without a mouth and stomach connection is one out of many.
The child had incredible pain all his life until it died at the age of two of exhaustion and many infections.
If you don't show any mercy with that child you are way out of giving any right to have an opinion here. It doesn't matter if that case may be an impact in hypothetical scenarios you create.
It is a practical example that forced a decision.

" Further, it is a distinction which is bridged very easily (and often) in practical terms by those with power over others, "

It shows that theoretical talking about moral need to have points of contact with reality at all. (Practical Ethics)
If there isn't any connection it is fiction.
In reality organizations like the state, parties, institutes and even parents are in dependent relationships with individuals. Ethics is more a description how you don't use your power over someone else.

"I know that in the state of Oregon which..."

You want that the organization "Oregon" need to use his power in a relation with elder people.
Actually the organization is not to be blamed that people are getting older and need help at some point. But you suggest collectivistic moral again and that of a shocking way:

"but it is not a surprising end result of a philosophy that states death is better than suffering."

Are you serious?
I mean...
ARE YOU SERIOUS? O_o

Praising suffering is way out, as well... Sorry.

The independent reader may choose which end of life is better: A painful death or not.


To 2.)

" I believe that Being precedes consciousness as without my Being, I could never have thought in the first place. Without there existing objects outside of my Being that I can sense, "

It seems that you want to have yellow without having a color.

"I do not have a clean definition for you as such because I am still trying to understand this myself!"

That is an honest answer. I wish you good luck.

"He tends to look at some nebulous concept called "quality of life" and that can lead to severe abuses against people like the elderly and the sick who cannot stand up for themselves."

1.)
Most of that is actually propaganda by several collectivists (mostly fundamentalists) who don't want to risk their own position in some institutions and confuse individual decisions with governmental decrees or orders.

That is pretty clear if you actually read his "practical ethics".

So there is the position that someone is making his own's choice in life - Like active euthanasia and passive euthanasia.
(Which is Singers position)

Or the position that a state, a community, a religious belief or institution (that claims to have the truth) etc. is at last in almost any case responsible for decisions of someones life. (Which is the position of most of his critics)
Actually that is a pretty closer to some horror ideologies (actually it is almost the same, even if they label it "protective")

2.)
So when you talk about it is based on the mindset that "who cannot stand up for themselves", that you make those people objects someone else has to decide about first. Singer does not allow that in the first case.
Singer goes even further: He says if someone is not able to articulate or think about herself/hisself like most other animals beside humans, they need to have the same rights.

See my response to  out-of-the-boks. And the distinction you try to draw between individuals and governments here is irrelevant. It doesn't change the fact that "quality of life" leads itself to devaluing the lives of others and even our own life which is the more pertinent point.

Dominus tecum

Nope it does not.
That is what I wrote before (individual rights versus state responsibility. Individual > Organization or Individual < Organization.)

Oh...I almost forget to answer the topic. XD
Pretty nice find. Would like to read far more statements of that kind. They are pretty similar to my own thoughts.

(My English isn't the best at the moment >_>' )