Peter Singer has held different forms of utilitarianism in his career. He used to be a preference utilitarian, believing that the good to maximize is the satisfaction of preferences, including those of the dead. However, he was not entirely convinced of this idea. Now, Singer is a hedonistic utilitarian, which means he believes that the only reason to pay attention to the wishes of the dead is to give the living confidence that their own wishes will be respected. Singer also highlights the potential issue of population shrinkage and the accumulation of past preferences, suggesting that it could lead to significant problems in the future.
Peter Singer is one of the world’s most influential living philosophers, whose ideas have motivated millions of people to change how they eat, how they give, and how they interact with each other and the natural world.
Peter joined Tyler to discuss whether utilitarianism is only tractable at the margin, how Peter thinks about the meat-eater problem, why he might side with aliens over humans, at what margins he would police nature, the utilitarian approach to secularism and abortion, what he’s learned producing the Journal of Controversial Ideas, what he’d change about the current Effective Altruism movement, where Derek Parfit went wrong, to what extent we should respect the wishes of the dead, why professional philosophy is so boring, his advice on how to enjoy our lives, what he’ll be doing after retiring from teaching, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded May 25th, 2023
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Photo credit: Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek