If you’re a #deepthinker, #lifelonglearner, #changemaker, or simply someone who loves exploring challenging ideas and unique #perspectives, watch this now… Join me and #PeterSinger for a deeper conversation on… - How do we determine #rightfromwrong? - What is #effectivealtruism? - Should we shut down or encourage #controversialideas? And so much more… Watch now and comment below to share your unique #perspectives on some of life’s toughest questions alongside one of the world’s most influential living philosophers today. Go to remipearson.com/podcast or listen to🎙️#Perspectives podcast on @Spotify or @ApplePodcast for the full episode. P.S. I love what Peter shared at 21:45 on 'How do you not hurt someone's feelings if you have a controversial idea?', let me know your take?
Perspectives - Peter Singer SHOWNOTES
[00:09:00] I present to you, Mr. Peter Singer. Thank you for joining us today.
Peter: You're very welcome, Sharon. It's good to be with you.
Remi: Thank you. So, I'd like to get started. I'm really curious to know what you're currently thinking about and working
Peter: on right now, I'm working on a revised edition of Animal Liberation.
That's a book that I first published in 1975. It's never been out of print but the most recent edition really is from 1990. By that, I mean, there are, there are editions which looked like this or recent. There's 2009, when I think exactly that's, that's one of the paperbacks, it does have a new preface and it has some additional material at the end, but the basic text in between the preface and the supplementary material at the end.
Is pretty much unchanged for 30 years. So that's not good, obviously. If you want to keep up with what's going on in terms of factory farming kinds of experiments that are performed on [00:10:00] animals and of course the impact of climate change and what that's done to our thinking about eating meat.
We really, you know, I really need to make some changes, a lot of changes to the book. So that's my current project.
Remi: Well, I wasn't going to stop it, but we will. And we'll talk about it. Animal Liberation and your book, you released it in 1975 and the landscape of animal liberation or animal welfare was very different than can you paint a scene of what it was like and what was the impetus for writing this one ended up being a completely transformational book for animal welfare around then.
Peter: Well, price is one way of getting people who are listening today to see how much the scene has changed is to say that my interest in animals and my thinking about the ethics of what I was eating got started just a few years before that in 1970 to be precise. When I happened to have a conversation with a fellow graduate students.
So, I was 24 [00:11:00] years old. I was, I'd been to university in Melbourne and then I'd gone to Oxford to do my graduate work. And I happened to meet a fellow Canadian who when we went in for lunch, asked if there was meat in the sauce on top of the spaghetti. And when he was told there was, he took a salad plate instead And so after we'd finished our conversation, we were having I asked him what his problem with meat was.
And you know, I think this was really the first conversation I'd had with a vegetarian. Maybe he was the first vegetarian that I'd met or perhaps I'd met some Indian vegetarians for Hindu reasons, but certainly the first person who I'd met a vegetarian, who just had a straightforward kind of ethical answer to that question that he didn't like the way we treat animals and didn't really want to be complicit in the way animals were being treated.
And so, you know, anybody who. Listening to that. I was been a university. You can hardly get their head around the fact that you can be 24 years old and not have met a vegetarian and not really thought about that. [00:12:00] But that's how it was. And that's pretty much how it was in 1975 when the book came out.
And you know, people did find it very strange to see a sort of serious argument about why we shouldn't be eating meat based on concern for the animals. Because you know, if people thought about animal welfare at all, they thought about dogs and cats maybe about horses, but they didn't really think about chickens and pigs and calves.
Remi: Yeah. Part of what you described when you talk about that book and why it came about, which I really loved was it was a very sentimental attitude in the movement at the time. And the way you felt that you could contribute to the movement was with. You didn't say clear thinking with rationality. Can you speak a little bit to that for those rare individual, listening to this podcast who doesn't know who you are or the work that you've contributed to our planet and to our thinking, what was the thinking back then that led you to believe this is where I can contribute.
And maybe this will be a way to start [00:13:00] introducing consequentialism and utilitarianism and some of your other philosophical bedrock.
Peter: Right? So, in terms of, you know, how I can contribute it was sort of somewhat accidental that I ended up doing philosophy. I had gone to university planning to study law and then an advisor thought.
Find the law course a bit dry. And why didn't I combine it with an arts course? So, I started doing combined dance law course. Then I got to enjoy the outside of it more and I got offered a scholarship to go on with graduate work in that field Went into philosophy. I enjoyed it. I found it interesting.
But you know, it, wasn't going to make a significant contribution to the world. I wasn't, you know, I couldn't say that that was my primary motivation at that time, but this was the late sixties and then early seventies. And of course, there were a lot of radical ideas around and radical political movements including opposition to the war in Vietnam, which I was part of in Australia.
[00:14:00] And then there was the civil rights movement, the black liberation movement. And so, there were ethical ideas floating around and it was always more the ethics and political philosophy side of philosophy that I was interested in that was. Where, where it makes a difference, I guess, where it has an impact on the way we live directly.
So that's, that's why, when, when I started thinking about this issue of animals and then as you correctly say at that time there wasn't a real animal movement or in so far as there were anti-cruelty organizations mostly appealing to people's sentiments. So, there would be cute pictures of puppies and kittens and asking you to help rescue them, something of that sort.
But there was, there was nothing really saying that even if you don't love animals there are still something seriously wrong about the way we are treating animals. And I never did think of myself as an animal lover and I still don't. But I do think that there are things very seriously wrong about [00:15:00] the way we treat animals and on a vast scale.
So this is not a small issue, right? When you take account of the fact that there's over 70 billion animals raised and killed for food each year, the great majority of them indoors in factory farms. It's the very major issue.
Remi: One of the things I like about sentimentality when it comes to animal welfare is it can get the conversation started.
So, you have a very rational and I'd love you to speak more about utilitarianism. Aspect to it, which I really admire, but I didn't get to my 18 years ago, I became a vegetarian and vegan for a while. I didn't get there because of the reasons you've given that it's the right thing to do. And it reduces the most suffering or increases the most pleasure I got there because my health suffered, and I went on an elimination diet and I needed to find recipes for a vegan.
And there were barely any 20 years ago. And in reading recipes, I read about animal welfare. So, the way I got there was very indirect. So, what role do you think can be [00:16:00] played in sentimentality or in other roads that get us to the conclusions you've come to?
Peter: Well, of course, a lot of people do get to these conclusions through.
Love for animals in one way or another. One of the greatest campaigners in the late 20th century for animals was a man. I got to know called Henry Spira. And, and he was a great social activist working for blacks in the American south and for underprivileged people everywhere. But he only started to see animals as underprivileged when a friend who was going overseas, dumped a cat on him.
And he never really thought about animals, but basically the cat seduced him. And, and, you know, more or less around that time, he came across some of my writing and that, that did help. But you know, yeah, without the cat, maybe we would have lost one of those great container campaigners.
I'm not putting down a love for animals at all. I think it's a, it's a great way to get people to understand that animals are individual beings, that their lives can go well or badly for them. [00:17:00] And that we should be caring about them. We shouldn't just draw the boundaries of moral concern around our own species.
So yeah, it definitely plays a good role, but you know, you asked about my utilitarianism. So philosophically I hold the view that the right thing to do is the action that will have the best consequences and by best consequences I, and the classical utilitarian’s mean do the most to promote happiness and reduce suffering.
So, from that it straightforwardly follows that given that animals can suffer at least many animals can suffer We ought to be including them within our concerns of, of what we do. And we shouldn't just say, well, morality is only for humans. You know, there are some people who say it, but many more people who think that, but you know, we certainly think when it comes to humans, that even if you're not particularly rational or nevertheless, you can, we, we still think, we think humans have a certain moral status [00:18:00] that makes it wrong to do things to them, even if they lose or never have the higher cognitive abilities.
But when it comes to animals, we say, well, they, you know, they don't think they're not, self-conscious, they're not autonomous, they're not moral agents, all of these things. So, so they don't really can't. But I, I think, I think that's just a mistake and it's, as I say, not something we consistently apply within our own species.
So we shouldn't use it as a way of drawing lines between our species and other species.
Remi: You speak really eloquently about species ism and particularly around chimpanzees. I remember back in 2014, there was an article you wrote in this book that you've written, which I love the ethics in the real world.
And you're speaking about the rights of a chimpanzee and in 2014, I understand it went to court in Europe to get a chimpanzee, to have human rights. Talk about how the logic of utilitarianism arrives at that point, where we elevate [00:19:00] that's really poor choice of words to the same level as how we prize human life.
Peter: Yeah, well, as I say, I think it is a critique of, of drawing the boundaries of rights just around species and it's saying. There are other things that matter. Now, now this particular case you mentioned was based on a chimpanzee and chimpanzees do have kind of capacities to, to think, and to reason to a certain extent and solve puzzles and there's research showing that they anticipate things in the future.
They're thinking ahead as well, not to the same extent that we do, but significantly. So I think the chimpanzee was really taken as a kind of test case and basically challenging the courts to say, well, how is it that we're saying all human beings have rights irrespective of their mental capacities, but he is an animal whose mental capacities are clearly superior to that of newborn babies and superior to that of some [00:20:00] profoundly intellectually disabled humans.
And yet this chimpanzee doesn't have rights. Why, why should that be? So, I think that's basically a way to try. Bridge the Gulf that both. Law and popular morality place between humans and animals. And I think the thinking is that if you can do that for chimpanzees, well, we'll also bring some of the other animals closer.
And although the 2014 case in, in Europe didn't succeed, there are other cases going on. And right now, the New York state court of appeal, which is pretty high Cape the highest court in the New York state system is going to hear a case on behalf of an elephant. Who's been very miserably in prison.
Solitary for many years in, in a zoo in New York. So that will be interesting. And I mean, it just the fact that the court has agreed to hear this case is something of a breakthrough. I think it's the, the highest [00:21:00] level court in the English speaking well anyway, to, to hear a writ of habeas Corpus which is an ancient legal writ for, you know, basically it says, give me the body, you know, show me if, if the king was holding someone who, you know why, why can't, why can't you give that person over to me?
Why are you holding him? And it's it's if the court says it does apply to an animal, that would be something of a breakthrough.
Remi: How do you think the animal liberation movement is doing since 1975? It's obviously come a long way. There's a lot more vegans. It's more normal conversation. Sit down in a restaurant and San vegetarian are men.
What I began being a vegetarian 20 years ago, it stopped conversations and restaurants had nothing. I remember traveling Italy and couldn't find anything but rice to have. It was so strange all those years ago. That's really basic and anecdotal. How far do you think the movements?
Peter: Well, it has come a long way in, in that respect and the understanding of people choosing [00:22:00] not to eat meat or even to be vegan.
And what that means. People wouldn't have understood what the word vegan meant 40 or even 20 years ago. So, it's come a long way. There it's come a long way in terms of having some political influence and being recognized by governments as a group that they ought to listen to, that people do care about.
But it hasn't come that far in terms of changing the conditions, which got me to think that what we're doing to animals is, is wrong and wrong on a vast scale, because there are still billions of animals in factory farms. The conditions might have improved a little bit. Might've been tweaked a little bit with some regulations in some countries.
Particularly the European union has banned some practices that unfortunately still exist in Australia and still exist in much of the United States. Although there are now seven states, including California, that don't allow hands to be kept in cages. For example, so, so we're making [00:23:00] progress, but it's been a long time, you know, it's, you couldn't say it was rapid progress, unfortunately.
And I'd like us to move forward a lot faster.
Remi: My, if I was queen for a day, I would declare that all ever twice had to be renamed, slow to houses and had to have glasses.
Peter: Well, exactly. In fact though, we could just do it with webcams. Now we really have the technology. We don't need glass walls and why not factory farms as well.
You know, why not everywhere where animals has, why not laboratories? Why doesn't the public have a right to see what's going on in these places? Yeah.
Remi: Al morality seems to move with proximity and morality meets. It goes up. If we approximate to the suffering, we have a view on that suffering, but the suffering this at a site where I can not having a view of, but it is the same suffering that is contributing to our choice of what we can eat or whatever.
We need to close the proximity gap and suddenly your ethics will be.
Peter: Yes. [00:24:00] I have, I hope so. I hope we can do that, but you're right. We, we like to look away from things that are unpleasant and we just continue doing, supporting them indirectly because essentially buying a product of the animal exploitation industry is all the support it needs from us.
And we continue to do that. But if somebody says, you know, do you know what life is like for an animal and a factory farm? A lot of people would just say, no, don't, don't tell me, I don't want to know your spoil my enjoyment of my next chicken pig or whatever it might be.
Remi: Hmm. Thank you, Peter. And can I also, just on behalf of my team here, who just loved that you're here.
Thank you for the movement you created and how far you have fought for a cause that matters so much. It's this is going to go to three, 400,000 people, and I'm sure I speak for a lot of them saying you're extraordinary and your philosophy and the views. Put forward in the face of controversy and you still just hold the line.
I think it's extraordinary.
Peter: Well, thanks very much. [00:25:00] I don't see that controversy as a reason for changing your, your views. Good arguments might be, but they're not controversy, but I certainly appreciate the opportunity to communicate with your 300,000. Yeah.
Remi: Yeah. I think it'll probably be more with Peter Singer.
Yeah, I think that's the bottom baseline. I, what I want, we got into an, a liberation because that's the work you're working on now, but what I've been thinking about, if I was to talk to Peter singer, the question I want to ask him, which I puzzle over is how do you determine what's right or wrong or good or bad?
I struggle even with utilitarianism and perhaps we can speak about it through that frame, or you can bring some themes in, but how do you think about what's good or bad or right or wrong?
Peter: Well, I do think about it through the frame of utilitarianism. That's something that I, I came to obviously over a period of time and I think about it very often and you know, you're certainly not the only one who doesn't find that easy to accept.
And there are [00:26:00] other very good philosophers who take different views. And of course, I listen to them and take a look at why they hold the views they do and why they don't accept utilitarianism. And that that's an ongoing debate and, and it should be, that's what philosophy is like, we don't try and enforce conformity or agreement.
We encourage open debate because that's the way in which we better understand our own positions and the positions of others. But for me you know, somebody. Ideas like, like rights or duties. I want to know where they come from and I don't get good answers. And in fact, when you ask people, well, what rights do people have or what do you do and rights clash.
I don't get very clear answers on that. It's not that I'm opposed to talking about rights whether it's human rights or animal rights, but I think they have to be derived from something. And when I ask myself, what can they be derived from? It does seem to me that the only possible answer is a [00:27:00] better.
Better lives for all of those beings whose lives can go well or badly from their own internal perspective. And that really means being super conscious beings who can feel something, and you know, feel pain or pleasure have a good day or a bad day or good life or a bad life. So, I think we that's, that's how we should be thinking about things and we should be thinking about things, not just.
For ourselves or our country, or even for our species, but for all Sandy and beings. And not just for those who are there, here and now, but also for those who will exist in future, as far as we can predict the future. And of course, to go back to what you were saying a few moments ago, not just for those who are in close proximity, tourists, but also those on the other side of the world who might be complete strangers.
So, so that's the kind of framework that I use. It's it's one that's impartial between Sandy and beings, just giving [00:28:00] equal consideration to their interests. Whatever those, where the interests are comparable or similar and trying to do what you can to make the world a better place in those terms.
Remi: Okay. So, I guess the reason for my question is I'm noticing there's a lot more advocacy these days for hurt feelings being worthy of stopping a message. And then I listened to what you said about. Good and bed in another interview you did. And I'm finding a conflict between the two. How do you not hurt someone's feelings?
If you have a controversial idea? And if we agree that meant to be doing the least harm, does that mean we stopped saying it? At what point does this moral code kick in? How much hurts feelings are we allowed to tolerate or cause something?
Peter: Well, there's no answer to how much hurt feelings in general, because it depends on what's on the other side.
So certainly, we should not [00:29:00] gratuitously hurt someone's feelings. And a lot of the nastiness that you find on social media, where people do abuse each other and sling off is, is quite wrong because it's not serving any real purpose. You know, maybe people are letting off steam for themselves, but it's not serving a purpose.
On the other hand, when it comes to controversial ideas, if the ideas are ones that have the possibility of. Being right. And of making a positive difference to the world then I think we should be prepared to accept a certain amount of hurt feelings. I don't think we can say that you can't express an idea that might hurt someone's feelings, because it would be hard to say anything new or different if that were the case.
Right. So a lot of the things that we now take for granted, you know like let's say the idea that people were the same sex orientation, or to be able to marry that would have been regarded as [00:30:00] extremely offensive to many religious people who thought that this was a terrible perversion and contrary to God's will.
And so on, you know, we wouldn't, you could imagine those people. Took the standards of today saying, well, you know, we, we have to make sure that nobody is allowed to express those views. We have to cancel them if you want to use that so that these dangerous and perverted views contrary to God's will don't get into the community.
But obviously that would have been a bad thing to do. So we have to be prepared to accept that if ideas are serious ideas that have the potential to make a difference in the world and a positive difference, we have to allow, I think, ideas to be exchanged and to be argued about. And that's the way in which we find out what is right.
And what isn't,
Remi: the way I'm seeing it is. If we're not willing to explore bad ideas, we risk not ever getting to the good idea. Cause I don't always say what I mean the first time, as well as I want to say it when I'm building a program [00:31:00] here or something like that, but it leads to an idea of significance down the track.
But if it wasn't that to flourish in the beginning, when it was very misguided or completely off base, it never would have come to fruition and touched people's lives. Surely, it's an imperative that this idea of freedom to explore different ideas that may conflict with somebody else's needs to be encouraged.
Peter: Yes. I agree entirely with that. And not only do we need to have, you know, criticism and discussion to refine our own ideas and improve them, but even if somebody you know, even if an idea is correct, I think people don't really understand why it's being held, unless you allow somebody to object to it and then somebody else will respond to that objection and lay out the reasons why we hold this at it.
Because if you don't have that, it's just like a dogma. It's just something. Well, this is something we all believe, but why do we believe it? You know, do we allow it to be [00:32:00] questioned and challenged? And has it withstood those challenges? If it has, then we have an answer to why we believe it. If it hasn't, maybe we don't have any.
Remi: How would you describe the state of the academy right now, given the amount of controversy around controversial ideas and professors being canceled or younger people in the academy being feeling intimidated. How would you describe the state of play and what is it you would like to see?
Peter: Yeah.
Terrible as it's sometimes being painted, but it's certainly also not as good as it could be. And I do count myself fortunate that I'm not standing at as a young academic without any security of position in, at this particular time because who knows, I might not have gone further.
Remi: So I'm thinking of one idea you may have had that came up in Germany that perhaps wouldn't have been that helpful if it was this time.
Peter: Right. So you're talking about my ideas about parents having the [00:33:00] possibility of euthanasia for their severely disabled infants. Yes. That's that? That's certainly a vote, a lot of controversy and still occasionally does. Yeah. I haven't seen arguments to suggest that I was wrong, but perhaps I have come to realize that People are not always as well informed about the prospects for their disabled children as they should be.
And so now when I talk about this, I encourage parents to make contact with organizations, for people with the disability that their child might have, and try to learn more about what kind of a life prospect their child may have, or. So, so I, I have learned something from that controversy anyway, even if I haven't completely changed my views, but but to get back to your question about, about the academy, I've been disappointed that some of the, he does have academic institutions have not stood up for freedom of speech as firmly as they should have and have yielded to protests and petitions and so on.
When I think they shouldn't [00:34:00] I'm, I'm fortunate that when I was appointed to Princeton in 1999, there were some protests because of my views about euthanasia and abortion as well. And one. Members of the board of trustees that is the governing body of Princeton called for my appointment to be rescinded.
But the president of the universities stood up strongly for academic freedom and was supported by every other trustee on the board. So I'm glad that that happened. And I'm pretty confident that that would happen again at Princeton with the president that we have today. But obviously there are some other academic institutions around the world where people don't stand up in that way.
Remi: How would you like to say it other than the latest standing up, what would be the invitation that you would put out that perhaps we need to stop bringing back into academia or introduce for the first time there?
Peter: Oh, so I think what we need to bring back is a greater respect for freedom of thought and [00:35:00] discussion and somewhat less sensitivity.
To people being offended. I think that that has been taken too far and people have extreme stances on things that have caused offense. And that certainly wasn't, wasn't the case when I was starting out as an academic. So yeah, I'd like to see more robust discussions. I'd also like to see less political partisanship in a way.
I, I have a feeling now that people. Let's say if they're progressive, if they're on the left side of the political spectrum they feel they have to adopt the whole package of positions. You know, I certainly consider myself on, on, on that side of the spectrum in many areas, but I don't feel that I have any obligation to support everything that's said.
And there are some things that are said by people on that side that I will, will disagree with it. And I think it's much better to respond issue by issue than to take [00:36:00] up a whole group and say yeah, well, this is what progress is believed. So this is what I do.
Remi: Let's throw religion in there. It, I would say maybe that as religion goes down, secularism comes up, nothing's changed in the human beings, desire to connect, to belong and to know what they stand for.
As religious dogma decreases all the dogmas seem to increase. Do you see any parallels? Is that anything you've given thought to?
Peter: I've certainly given thought to in a way, I suppose the resilience of religious belief, which you know, if you'd asked me 50 years ago whether it would be as strong today as it is, I would have said, no, I think it's, it's on the decline.
And it's particularly in those nations where people have high levels of education, it will continue to decline. But that, you know, that hasn't happened. Maybe it has declined somewhat over that period and it, depending on which country you're talking about. But, but part of the reasons for [00:37:00] that resilience is I think, as you say, people have a need to belong.
And the question is for some people they're a church or mosque or synagogue has been that place. And is there really something. That can replace it now. I think that's, you know, again, that does vary from country to country and the strength of your institutions that you might be part of and your group of friends, but I think it's, it's part of the reason why secular view hasn't become more or less universal among, among people with some education.
Remi: Hmm, morality seems to be difficult for humans. We seem to wrestle with it. What are your thoughts on how to bring a moral frame to decision-making? How do you approach morality? What are your thoughts on it? And perhaps throw into the mix sentimentality and your thoughts on that? Because we do seem to squish them all up together,
[00:38:00] Peter: right?
We do. So one of the things that I think about when I approach moral issues is I try to distinguish my gut responses what you might call a yak reactions from my reason judgments. So. You know, I think we are clearly evolved beings. We have evolved from social mammals over millions of years.
We have, you know, our closest relatives of the other great apes because we are also great apes. And we know a lot more now about the behavior. Great apps and of other social mammals. And we also know a lot more about what goes on in our brains. When we're asked about moral dilemmas, there've been scientists like Josh green.
Who've asked people moral dilemmas while they're having their brain scanned and see what pits of their brain are active at that particular time. So we know now that we have these kinds of instantaneous responses to descriptions of certain situations [00:39:00] which, which visceral, which we might say no, that's wrong, but I think we also know enough to say these are biologically evolved.
These helped our ancestors to survive and to reproduce and. Ensure that children survived for millions of years. And so they have been to some extent hardwired into a psychology, but that doesn't mean that they're the best way of approaching questions in the 21st century where things are very different.
And this goes to one of the things that you said earlier about when we're in proximity to people or to animals for that matter, we'll respond much more strongly than if we're merely thinking about. Distant strangers or animals far from, and that's because for all of those millions of years, we lived in small face-to-face societies.
Most people think that that humans lived in groups of between one and 200. So we [00:40:00] knew everyone in those societies. It was a lot of mutual helping, obviously, where you help them. And they helped us in times of need. And we responded to them, but we didn't really know or care in the same way for people who might be living just on the other side of the mountain Ridge of our valley.
And so we, you know, when, when, when we now have much greater ability to assist people on the other side of the world and we're in, we're much more interwoven with them, as of course the pandemic shows. We didn't get the pandemic from within Australia. It came from outside. Then we, we, we have to change.
We have to think on a larger, more global scale and that kind of small group morality that is still wired into us in some respects really needs to change, or we need to change the decisions we make so that they do have a broader focus.
Remi: How does that reconcile with your views on border management, international [00:41:00] border management?
Peter: Well, I think there are two things that I want to say on this one is that as I said earlier, my morality is quite impartial and the interest and wellbeing of somebody who comes from the other side of the world shouldn't catalyst for that reason and the interest and wellbeing of my fellow Australians.
But at the same time, I recognize that that is a rational take on the issue, which. For most people is not going to be, be dominant. You know, they're, they're all capable of taking that view of it and maybe they have some attraction to it, but they also have this more visceral response that you know, strangers are not as good some way as the people that I know and associate with.
There's kind of a certain element of, of xenophobia, of fear or hatred of, of strangers that I think still. Resides within many people. And I regret the fact that it [00:42:00] does, but we can't just ignore it. I think we can't just say, well, so let's open our borders that would not lead to a good situation because of the hostility of many people in, in any countries.
It's not particularly about Australia in, in any countries to an influx of a large number of strangers, particularly people who don't look like them or don't, you know, have different religions or different customs. So so in a democracy anyway, I think that I, I, I do not advocate that governments take a sort of open borders stance.
That seems to me to be. To be a mistake. And obviously the political parties that are more likely to do that would be the political parties that I have more sympathy with and whose policies I generally endorse. But they are not going to achieve office if they take that stance. And so therefore not only a good policy on accepting asylum seekers and refugees would be lost, [00:43:00] but good policies on climate change, good policies on greater assistance for disadvantaged people within our own country.
Better policies on foreign aid. All of those things would be lost. And that's why I understand that politics is a matter about what's possible about a compromise between what your ideals are and what you may be able to achieve if you're successful. Political elections. So, so that's, that's why I don't really take the stance of saying that any, any political party that restricts intake of asylum seekers is doing something wrong.
Remi: Okay. One of the comments you made in another interview I was listening to was that to let the borders come down into kind of color countries recently, hasn't worked that well, and it has it wasn't in a phobia, you addressed, it was a market decrease in the quality of living. And there was a struggle within that country to reconsolidate the amount of help they had to provide so [00:44:00] rapidly.
Do you still hold that view or.
Peter: I'm not sure which interview you're referring to your
Remi: country in my mind. Cause I've only referred. I've only reviewed 20. We'll leave it out. That's okay. And edit out. I have that power. So one of the things I want to talk with you about is you said on Andrew Denton, and I'm going to quote you to get it correct.
That if you and your wife had a child with down syndrome, you would adopt the baby out. I would love you to talk about your thinking on this from a utilitarian point of view and have our viewers understand your mind because your rationality is so clear. And I really curious about how you come to that and.
Yeah, how you come to that.
Peter: Right. Okay. So I think that probably is what we should do, but to be fair, since it's only me talking, I don't want to really talk on behalf of my wife. She has her own news, which don't not necessarily identical with mine. So, so let me just say that I'm speaking. [00:45:00] So I know about the kind of person I am, but I would like to have a child who I can have eventually, obviously not, not immediately when they're very small, but who I can have the kind of conversation that you and I are having now with.
And I think that's unlikely with a child with down syndrome. So to me it would not, it would be a shadow hanging over the relationship. Children with down syndrome and people with down syndrome can be very loving and warm and close. But it would be a shadow over the relationship that I think I would always feel some regret about that.
My child would not grow up to be the kind of child that I could regard as fully an equal in terms of thinking about issues about in the world and thinking how best to help the world and to make the world a better place. So that's why I think I, I said that now, you know, some people are probably the discussion arose from somebody asking me, given that I think that parents ought to have options of euthanasia for severely disabled newborns, whether [00:46:00] I thought that was the right thing to do in the case of someone with down syndrome But what I I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about parents having that option is children whose lives are going to be ones of, of suffering for themselves and where you're not likely to be able to find adoptive parents who would love and cherish that child.
And, and I don't think Dan syndrome is one of those cases. It's, it's certainly not necessarily a situation of suffering for the person with down syndrome. They can enjoy their lives. And because as I say, they can be warm and loving children and people there generally are couples who would be willing to adopt them.
And that's particularly, so now it wasn't. So before we had a test for down syndrome in utero, because during pregnancy, because. Then, of course we had a lot more down syndrome, children being born and perhaps the number of children being born my guidance at some times, and in some places being greater than the number of parents willing to adopt a child with [00:47:00] down syndrome.
But, but now that we do have those tests and there are far fewer children with down syndrome being born I think you could find loving adoptive parents. And that would be the best thing to do in those circumstances. As I say, if you had parents like me, who would rather not bring up that child, but would have had another child who might be able to meet, meet the expectations that I just mentioned,
Remi: the reason I asked you that question is got nothing to do with my views on that, or really your views on it.
It's just, I find it remarkable that you say these views. When I see so many academics, not saying. In any way, anything controversial, they are playing this really safe phage line. And every time I listened to an interview by you, and by now in my research, it's quite a few, you speak so plainly and clearly about your views without any hesitancy.
How do you get to that? Or is that question just completely redundant to you? Because of course you should speak this way. [00:48:00] If this is the truth you've come to using or philosophical, philosophical stance I'm standing here going.
Peter: You know, like I probably wasn't born like that. I did adopt fuse, which were out of the mainstream reasonably early on as, as we've been talking about, including becoming a vegetarian, when that was a very unusual stance to take. And then I also wrote something else. I hope we'll get time to talk about the obligations of affluent people to give to people in extreme poverty and how best to do that.
So I defended those stances and the then I got into these discussions about euthanasia, which arose, I suppose, out of my questioning of the doctrine of the sanctity of all human life, because the doctrine of the sanctity of all human life, if it doesn't embrace the sanctity of non-human life, obviously as a, a speciesism kind of doctrine, it draws this line on the boundaries of species.
And I wanted to challenge that and that got me to. Fuse that we were just talking about, [00:49:00] but I felt that you know, well, if I'm a philosopher, I should be prepared to speak up and give reasons for these views that I hold and show why they're part of a coherent and defensible set of moral views. As I believe.
Remi Your mind is phenomenal. And I would love to speak with you now about effective altruism. Thank you for the segue, Peter. I was looking@thewebsitegivewell.org and the philosophy behind it. Please share with our viewers what you consider effective altruism to be. And then we can unpack it a
Peter: little bit.
Right? So effective altruism is both a philosophical view on life and a social movement. The philosophical view on life is that one of your aims ought to be, to make the world a better place. Obviously, most of us are not saints. We're not going to divide ourselves a hundred percent of the time to making the world a better place.
But I think it's reasonable to [00:50:00] ask people, certainly people who are not struggling to survive to have that as, as one of their aims and Then the question is, so how do you do that? Or how do you do that most effectively? Because if you're trying to make the world a better place and you say, well, I've made the world a little bit better by donating to a certain charity, let's say, and then someone else points out.
But look, let's say you donated a thousand dollars to that charity. That's good. But don't you realize that here's another charity that could have helped twice as many people or could have done 10 times as much good with that thousand dollars as the one you gave to. And if that is the case, and that very often is the case, then it seems a mistake to donate to the charity that does less good.
So effective altruism is about. Get the most out of your resources. And I gave the example of donating, cause that's an easy example, but your resource might not be money. It might be [00:51:00] time that you can put into volunteering or helping or particular skills that you have that you can develop to help in one way or another.
But whatever it is, I think we ought to be thinking about how can I use them as effectively as possible.
Remi: And would you like to speak about givewell.org? And I think there was another organization that you helped to establish.
Peter: Is that right? Yes, certainly. Yeah. givewell.org was the original organization that started assessing charities, not just on the basis of their paperwork or whether they were well run or how much they spend on administration, but on the basis of what impact were they having?
How much good were they doing? And, and give well, pretty early on decided that at least as far as charities helping humans are concerned, we can get the biggest bang for our buck by helping people in extreme poverty in low-income countries. And you know, they've done very thorough research on that.
My, my only criticism of [00:52:00] GiveWell was that they were pretty narrow in a sense they were very nerdy because of the kind of research that they did. And they were not particularly user friendly or appealing to a broad audience. So, when I, after I wrote the life, you can save which the first edition at which came out in 2009,
Remi: just given away.
I understand.
Peter: Sorry, I'd given
Remi: away the book. You've just like chronically. Yeah, let's do a plug. So, the name of the book
Peter: is if you can save there's a brand-new edition, well, 2019 edition anyway, very new. And I am now giving it away either as an eBook or as an audio book. And the audio book is each chapter is read by different celebrity who volunteered their time.
So like the actress, Kristin bell, or the singer songwriter, Paul Simon, or the BBC personality, Stephen Fry, they all read a chapter. So yeah, you can go to the life, you can save.org and, and you can download [00:53:00] it for free. And that organization, the fact that there is a life, the life you can save.org came out of the book because a guy called Charlie Breslow contacted me after reading the book.
He was someone who had a very successful business career but had never felt fully satisfied in his business career. And it always felt he wanted to be doing something that was more in accord with the values of helping people. And. He basically said that he was still working at that time, but he basically offered to retire from his business career and devote himself.
I think he was in his fifties at the time to establishing this organization. And, and that's what he did. I'm chair of the board, but he was the chief executive for many years. He just stepped down to a slightly less intensive role. And we now have an Australian called Rick Vic strum as the as the chief executive of the world organization and also working in Australia.
Of course. So. Yeah, as I was saying, that organization is designed to be broader than GiveWell [00:54:00] to disseminate the results of give world's research and a research by some other organizations that followed give well in doing that kind of impact related research. And we will be increasingly doing some of our own research as well, but I think it's, it's designed to have a broad appeal and to encourage people to think about their charitable donations and to go to the website and you can look at about 20 recommended nonprofits that we have there.
And you can donate to them through the website and a hundred percent of your donation will go to the organization. We're just providing the service without taking any commission or anything like that. So, I hope people who are thing you've done anything well, we'll have a look at that and find the organization.
You know, they like, and that suit their interests. They're all good ones. And they're all ones where unhesitating any record.
Remi: And you recommended them based on a rationale you've literally studied how effective they are and getting the dollar to the [00:55:00] personal, the cause that needs the help rather than going on administration or any other costs.
Peter: Yes, that's right. It's, it's, it's the value you get which might be saving the lives of children by preventing them dying from malaria, or it might be restoring sight in people who are blind and can't afford to get cataracts removed, or can't afford to treat and prevent other forms of blindness or providing surgery for young women.
Who've given birth without medical assistance and have damaged the uterus and develop what's called a fistula, which means that there's a hole between the bowel or bladder and the uterus, and they leak feces or urine through that. And, and their lives basically are ruined in those circumstances unless they can get some surgery and the surgery is not expensive.
It's a few hundred dollars and you can give a young woman her life back. So, there are, you know, we we've looked at all of those organizations and we're confident that they are using money. That's donated to them with very high effective.
Remi: My understanding this is in the public domain, Peter. [00:56:00] But if you don't want to answer, that's fine.
I did read in ethics in the real world. You believe we should talk publicly about our charitable donations. So, I'd like to invite you. Cause I think I do know how much you give to make a difference. It's
Peter: phenomenal. Yeah. I'm, I'm giving somewhere between a third and a half of my income. Look, I'm, you know, I'm fairly fortunate.
I'm Professor at Princeton university I'm half-time now because want to spend more time in Australia, but you know, professors are well paid there and I have some other earnings, obviously, you know, you've shown some of the books, I own some royalties and so I'm pretty comfortably off. So, you know, that's not a level that I'm recommending for everybody.
That would I recognize be extremely tough for many people. What I do recommend is and it's, you can find it in the book, the life you can save. If you want to download that copy from. The website I recommend a kind of program, massive scale of giving. So, people are on fairly modest incomes. I suggest they start with 1% [00:57:00] just to be giving something.
And if they get comfortable with that and feel that that's okay and it's something worthwhile that they're doing, and they build up from there. And on the other hand, you know, people who are very comfortably off, I think they can certainly get to the kind of level that I'm at. They can donate a third of what they're giving perhaps.
And you know, guests, they will have less cash, but, but basically the research shows that consumer spending isn't really very satisfying. The long run, you know, people get a bit of a boost when they get this exciting new car or whatever else it might be, but it, it wears off whereas the fulfillment from knowing that you're helping people and doing something good in the world, doesn't wear off it.
It gives you a kind of a harmony between your values and your life. But I think is very raw.
Remi: This question may be too pointed. It may be, need to be an open question, but I, since I don't think you do pride, but it is an equivalent for you in how you live your practical ethics. So [00:58:00] completely,
Peter: Look, I'm, I'm, I'm not really proud of what I do because I mean and, and, and, and, you know, I look, I could be doing better, as I said, I'm not a Saint.
So it's, I use the term fulfillment, I think as well. You know what I feel I feel that I've done a reasonable amount of good in the world. I feel I've used the talents and capacities that I had a well and in a positive direction. And I'm satisfied with that.
Remi: You speak of being a hedonistic utilitarian, but I'm hearing meaning is more prevalent in your decision-making.
Peter: Yes. So when people talk about hedonism, they tend to have this image of the pleasures you get as being central pleasures, pledges of food or drink or, or sex or lying on the beach in the sun or something like that. You know, and they're all good. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not [00:59:00] putting this down at all.
They are positive, but I think we are the kind of being that seek something additional to that, not instead of, but additional and that is a kind of fulfillment or meaning in our lives. I think that's just the kind of beings that we are. And that is a kind of pleasure as well. You know, we shouldn't think of pledges as only those physical ones.
There are intellectual pleasures and I'm not sure whether you call just kind of satisfaction and intellectual pleasure. Exactly. But it, it, it is a, a sense of meaning pleasure in finding meaning.
Remi: Hmm. One of the things I'd love to chat with you about as we come to the end is the general of controversial ideas, which I believe has launched.
Is that correct? Well done. That's awesome. So, let's give credit to the three of you. It was yourself and two other academics that kind of helped this come to fruition. Would you like to mention their names? I've got them here, but I'm going to mispronounce.
Peter: You're probably thinking [01:00:00] of Francesca Minerva is an Italian academic who has herself been subject to abuse and physical threats for articles that she's published.
And I'd have to say the original spark of the journal came from her. She talked to me about it and we also talked to Jeff McMahon. Who's a professor of moral philosophy at Oxford university and a good friend of mine. And it's the three of us who are. Put this together. Essentially because we all believe that ideas are important.
It goes back to what we were talking about before, about the importance of being able to put forward different ideas. It is an academic journal, so it's not for everybody to just publish something in, but we send out all of the articles we received to experts in the field and we get their reviews of those articles.
And if they think that they're well-argued and rigorous, we will accept them. Sometimes I say, yes, button needs to be revised here or there. And then if the revision comes up, we accept them. And quite a lot of them we [01:01:00] reject. But yeah, we have published the first issue. It's an online open access journal.
We've had some donors who've made that possible. So, you can go to journal of controversial ideas.org, and you can read the first two. You can also support the general if you feel like doing that. And the other particular feature, cause of course there's lots of academic journals is that we allow authors to publish under a pseudonym.
If they're worried about being subject to abuse or about damaging their career prospects. As we were talking about before and of the, we have 10 articles in the first issue and three of those authors chose to public to publish under a pseudonym.
Remi: Hmm. And the purpose of the general of controversial ideas is to provide a.
Safe place a voice for ideas that have been pushed out of the mainstream that perhaps you feel and think and have assessed need to be heard or worthy of discussion. Have I captured the
Peter: purpose of it, right? Yes. We want to provide a sort of way in which ideas can be [01:02:00] expressed, even if other forums are close to them.
And in fact, one of the articles, not one published under a pseudonym, but one of the other articles the author put a little note there saying that this article had been accepted by a journal or positively reviewed anyway by the journal. And it looked like it was about to be accepted. And then after the murder of George Floyd and the concerns, very proper concerns of course, about racism and the editors seem to have second thoughts and Then rejected it.
So it is by no stretch of the imagination article it's discussing cultural traditions involving black face involving people coloring their faces and whether those are always wrong or sometimes defensible. But you know, that's an example of something that I think is a good, well thought out article and as a site in no sense of racial statical, but something that journalists didn't want to touch after in the last year or two,
Remi: how's the funding [01:03:00] going?
How's it going?
Peter: We've certainly got enough to publish the next couple of issues. So, we're going to be around for a while and I hope that as we publish more, we'll get more support from people who will like what we're doing.
Remi: We'll include links to everything we spoke about Peter, and to all your major works as well in the show notes.
So, our viewers can access more of your thinking, which I think would be just marvelous. Is there anything we haven't spoken about as we wrap up that you feel is worth mentioning or you think maybe one
Peter: want to there is one more thing actually, and I'll, I'll show it to you. This is, this is my newest publication.
I can't say it's exactly my newest book because I didn't write it. I edited; it's written by this person Abu Laos who lived in the second century in the Roman empire. And he wrote this really funny bawdy novel about a man who by magic gets turned into a donkey and What he experiences is a donkey.
And it is, it's very funny, but it's also very empathetic to [01:04:00] animals, quite surprising for something written in the Roman empire. So, I hope that your readers will pick it up and
Remi: enjoy it going in the show notes as well. For sure. Peter. Absolutely. You're so good doing that. That's so fun. Look, thank you so much, Peter, on behalf of my team who are all raving fans of you and people aren't in the building says 30 raving fans in this building.
We're excited that you're chatting with us. And as I said, this is going out to a lot of people be so pleased that your voice is amongst the many and much of the noise that's going on with such clarity. And we such a beautiful Clarion call to live a life of. Practical morality. You're a good kind, man. I studied you at university last year.
I read your book last year and I never dreamed I'd be. So, I'm a bit of a fan.
Peter: Terrific. And congratulations to you on building up that audience for us. Thank you for what you're
Remi: talking about. Keep up the great work. I will take care of the introduction in my time to not waste your time. Please go with our blessings and our kind thoughts.
[01:05:00] Peter: Thanks a lot,
Remi: sir. Bye bye. Bye bye