As an aspiring ethicist, I find it troubling to know the influence of ethicists such as Peter Singer. Not only are his ideas influencing academia, but academia trickles down to daily life and the thoughts of the “average” citizen. The Princeton professor of bioethics promotes a startlingly low view of human dignity. In his most recent debacle of an article, Singer proposes that our generation ought to be the last.
In his New York Times opinion piece titled, “Should This Be the Last Generation?” Singer begins by asking questions that I have recently considered in my own study of bioethics. Questions surrounding procreation (or the common and undesirable term “reproduction”) are important and pertinent. Yet, his solution to the question of whether and why to bring children into the world misses the point and value of life. Life is not ours to create and take at our own will. In fact, the tendency to refer to creation of new life as “reproduction” rather than “procreation” implies that babies are primarily ours for the making, rather than gifts of infinite value.
Dr. Gene Fant, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Union University, has an excellent piece at First Things explaining the travesty of Singer’s logic on human life. In a follow-up piece, Joe Carter offers further insight into Singer's dangerous ethics. Please take the time to look at these pieces. Human life is too valuable to be treated as if we have the right to determine its intrinsic worth or worthlessness.
Comments:
Or something like that. And presumably, he'd burn in hell for eternity, to boot.
I agree that sometimes suffering has great fruit - but often it doesn't. If we could see the entire life of a person from beginning to end, seeing all the good and bad it caused out to eternity, it may be that some of those lives were truly not worth going through. (But we can't see this, of course, which makes all the difference when applying this discussion to reality). That was what I took away from Singer's article, at least: that we should be thinking about what kind of world we're bringing our children into. If you're adrift in the Pacific after a shipwreck, you might want to wait on getting pregnant. Does that make sense?
More or less, I somewhat disagree with Amanda that life is "not ours to create ... at our own will".
Jason, to me, looking at Singer's philosophy, in which the happiness of rational or feeling beings is emphasized, "consensual" bestiality makes sense, while advocating suicide does not.
Apparently I misspoke regarding infanticide. What he really said was "killing infants.. can not be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings," which is a bit different, and puts them as different degrees of evil. But his arguments are a bit more nuanced than that. See http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1993----.htm and scroll down to "Life and Death Decisions for Disabled Infants".
Obviously, Singer's not a Christian and doesn't hold all human life to be sacred. But I have to agree with him on some points. I can't see how an egg and sperm that are about to combine together should have less rights than when they're combined (after all - the egg and sperm are alive, and human, right?). But then, I'm okay with early-term abortion.
PS - yes, obviously sperm and egg don't have the normal complement of DNA, but neither do people with Down's syndrome. Anyways - that's all off-topic.
I had a remarkably brilliant colleague, some years ago, who fought with his wife one night. She demanded a divorce, and he jumped to his death off a nearby bridge. At his funeral it was amazing to listen to the contributions he had made to the lives of others outside his own family, and to ponder what might have been had he decided to live - even as a divorcee.
And whenever the thought flits across my mind that some situation is unbearable, I think of how life became unbearable for Jesus - yet he persevered to benefit us all. If the Virgin Mary had had Peter Singer as an advisor, peering 33 years or so into the future at what her child would experience,...
What do you mean by "non-subjective less procreation"?
Jason, I can't really speak with authority on Singer's opinions, having read only Wikipedia's article and a few other articles by/about him. But as far as I know, he does not advocate infanticide or bestiality. Even if he had, though, I'd still be at a loss as to why it would mean he'd advocate suicide. On the other hand, I don't believe he condemns infanticide, bestiality, or suicide, either, and takes the stance that they can be morally neutral or even beneficial in some circumstances. (I feel that it's worthwhile to distinguish between "advocating" something, which is taking a position that it should happen, versus supporting someone's right to choose. Since we're talking about whether Singer should commit suicide to avoid hypocrisy in his comments about overpopulation, this is a relevant distinction).
Now if he does not in fact advocate such things, then I have simply heard wrong. Finding out the error in ill reports of someone else is not the worst correction to receive .
The most afflicted man in history said, "Let the day perish on which I was born" (Job 3:3). And the most prosperous man of his day said "the day of death" is better than the day of birth (Ecc. 7:1).
Singer, whether he knows it or not, is only responding consistently to the fact that life is not as it ought to be because of sin and all its consequences.
It's when you and I trade hope in this life to hope in life with Christ that we find life truly worth living -- and yet far inferior to eternity.
Ok, Singer's article it is.
Is it a problem the answer isn't obvious to Singer?
Not if there's no benefit to the answer being obvious to someone.
Speaking of benefit, I can't really understand this argument:
"To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her."
Can you explain how existence is neutral and 'a good life' is also non-positive to a person?
Because it's not infinite? Then how is that different from suffering?
What does it even mean for a person to be harmed or happy? Pain Threshold?
Singer goes on to say a little later (and I'm not sure if he's continuing Benatar's thought or his own):
"If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone."
Is this not bizarre nonsense? It's like estimating our worth by the going rates of our chemical composition. But it's worse, it's like saying "If we could get a subjective being to ignore their subjectivity, think how much less subjective they'd be". It says nothing about the quality of our subjectivity. And the glib reference to pollyannaism ignores that probably most people experience life in generally positive states - because people can experience joy even in suffering and usually, catastrophes are so upsetting because they upset the *normal* state of being.
Sure, maybe Singer's goal was to be controversial and thus get people to talk about it. But his idea of the good life seems to be 'minimal activity of pain receptors'. Does he want that to be the mantra of all future humans? (Interestingly, avatars could be designed with less pain receptors). His conclusions are usually pretty straightforward, given his premises. No pain receptors, no pain. No humans, no suffering. True. Life is good!
Btw, the worst is not less procreation. The worst is non-subjective less procreation. (Like the objective studies discussing the debilitating procreation of the unfit).
Is it a problem (that the answer isn't obvious to Singer)? At worst, some people reproduce less. There's no danger of the human race going extinct through non-procreation. Singer has said that he would choose a populated world, so I think he's either (a) trying to get people to reproduce less, or (b) just getting people thinking about this. (or (c), promoting his public image).
Jason, my guess is that if you want to find out what Singer believes, you should read his books. It would be dishonest, though, to say that he advocates people killing themselves, unless of course you have a quote from him that under a fair and balanced interpretation says as much. Doesn't it bother you when people say that Christians favor killing abortion doctors? We should be careful to accurately represent others' views.
Isn't one of the problems, Ben, that the answer *isn't* obvious to Singer?
And, you would rather the problems in Carter's post be highlighted over the problems in Singer's article? I find that strange. I doubt you'll find 'the ideal'/perfect article on the internet that cannot be found to have problems. But is Singer, contra Christendom, a Luther or Voltaire?
I can't say I have any problem with asking the question "Should this be the last generation?".. I just think the answer is obviously "no". But it is good for parents to think about what kind of world they'd be bringing a child into, and at least attempt to wait until they're "ready" before they start popping out minis.
Regarding the article.. maybe I'm just cynical, but my guess is that Singer is just trying to get people to reproduce less, not quit altogether. He's knows people won't stop, but he thinks that writing this will help with the overpopulation problem. Since he poses the article as a question, you can't say he's being hypocritical (indeed, he says that he would choose to have a populated world, given the choice). It's easy, though, to just read the title and first few paragraphs and come to the conclusion that Singer hates humanity.
Jason, Singer's not recommending people *kill* themselves.
Hm. There's a whole mess of problems with Carter's blog post.. but I don't want to even go there.
Or, at least until the servers run out of electrical power... ;-)
And thanks to this post's prompting, I now realize that the only way to have human "reproduction" is by a cloning mechanism such as described in the avatar article. (And, the article indicates that it's not possible to even come close yet. I'm reminded of those short stories where a person wishes to "live forever" and is granted exactly that wish, continuing to get older, and more feeble...) A human child is suitably distinct from both parents that "reproduction" is absolutely the wrong term. Bravo, Amanda!