Peter Singer Talks to Cosmic Skeptic About Utilitarianism | Podcast #6
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- iTunes: podcasts.apple...
Spotify: open.spotify.c...
-------------------------SUPPORT-------------------------
To support me on Patreon (thank you): / cosmicskeptic
To donate to my PayPal (thank you): www.paypal.me/c...
To purchase Cosmic Skeptic merchandise: cosmicskeptic....
To anybody who supports (or even considers supporting) my channel monetarily, thank you. I am naturally grateful for any engagement with my work, but it is specifically people like you that allow me to do what I do, and to do so whilst avoiding sponsorship.
----------------------VIDEO NOTES----------------------
Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and author of the seminal Animal Liberation, a book credited with initiating the modern animal rights movement. He speaks to Alex about utilitarianism and how we might apply it to all sentient creatures.
----------------------------LINKS-----------------------------
Peter Singer's books and writings: petersinger.in...
Henry Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics: amzn.to/2O8NrVy
-------------------------CONNECT--------------------------
My Website/Blog: www.cosmicskept...
SOCIAL LINKS:
Twitter: / cosmicskeptic
Facebook: / cosmicskeptic
Instagram: / cosmicskeptic
Snapchat: cosmicskeptic
The Cosmic Skeptic Podcast: podcasts.apple...
------------------------CONTACT---------------------------
Business email: cosmicskeptic@gmail.com
Or send me something:
Alex O'Connor
Po Box 1610
OXFORD
OX4 9LL
ENGLAND
-----------------------------------------------------------------
![[UA] NAVI проти G2 Esports | Blast Premier Fall Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QWlIm4FGESQ/mqdefault.jpg)
This is crazy... imagine learning about Singer in A-Level philosophy, then within a couple of years you're interviewing him... great podcast!
I know right, I'm so proud of him!!!
Chocolegs how, you don’t know him
Hope he invites Shelly Kagan next - an extremely sophisticated moral philosopher, who obliterated WLC in one of his debates.
@@arcticwolf6402 What is WLC?
@@chelbyw3364 William Lane Craig
Alex you are a natural philosopher. Crystal clear, analytical and logically consistent. I can see you having a huge impact on future generations. Keep up the excellent work
The opposite is true!ua-cam.com/video/h40PORX7O1A/v-deo.html
@@billionburns are you silly???
not quite sure about that but he sure is a hard worker.
He has evolved and presently evolving philosophically.
he is a very laughable robot figure in the perspective of metaphilosophy
Holy shit, you got peter singer on?
Edit: I literally had my final exams in philosophy about singers preferential utilitarianism
he is not a preference utilitarian anymore fyi he changed to hedonic utilitarianism
@@serenity748 Yeah ik, but my philosophy teacher didn`t lol
When they were talking about nobody can do something without taking pleasure in it(or something like that) what about having your much loved pet put down? It's not something you get pleasure from or feel good about, but you do it to prevent the further suffering of something you care deeply about.
@@budsio Not pleasure, enjoyment. Its an important distinction that (sadly) not all emotionalists make (emotionalism being that moral ideals are based purely in emotion), and it stems from psychoanalysis. You can think of it like this: Nobody (okay, almost nobody) takes pleasure in suffering. You can, however, enjoy suffering. An example would be people who whip themselves in religious practices, or human sacrifices in some cultures.
So, why do people put down their much loved pets? Maybe they make the calculation that it will decrease the pets suffering (which is only relevant to them since they would know about it, and in turn suffer with it). Maybe they know that in broader society, it is common practice to put down suffering animals, and have learned that compliance with societal practices tends to lead to more pleasurable outcomes (this is how norms are born btw). Maybe they take enjoyment in sacrificing their short- term pleasure "altruistically", for the good of their pet. There are many ways to explain your example and still accept emotionalism.
I hope i was helpful :)
@@brisca1668 Thanks! That's given me something to think about. Incredibly helpful, thank you.
You got peter singer?????
Dude I wrote my high school finals on his work
@Oners82 What makes you think he's a native speaker?
@Oners82 Looks like someone's got his panties in a bunch.
@Oners82 You are getting amused from really trivial things, buddy.
@@KingOfBboys You also made a few grammar and punctuation mistakes. What is your point? I doubt many people care.
**Searching for something to listen to while cooking (a vegan meal)**
....
:>
Pmakiie
Same, got some vegan sausages from sweden
William Lillevik Enjoyy :3
Fuck tbh I found this as I'm making burgers 😳
@@Shannxy I’m making steak 😶
This combination of thinkers and topics is what dreams are made of.
I've been completely stunned at the quality of conversation in this podcast throughout all its episodes, of which this is an outstanding example. I've never seen so much delightful, and very often pleasantly surprising and thought provoking, philosophical conversation in one place. I rarely, if ever, feel there is some significant point left out of the conversation (an uncomfortable pang I'm sure most of us are somewhat familiar with).
Keep up the good work!
Peter seems unused to having his views challenged so well, Thanks Alex for not just rolling over and agreeing just because he is Peter Singer.
Singer is used to talking about practical ethics, and doesn't do many interviews about meta-ethics. Still, I thought he gave reasonable responses to Alex's points (gave examples of self-evident truths, and accurately pointed out that some self-evident truths have more force than others), and his book 'The Point of View of the Universe' is clearer still. Singer was also right that pleasure and preferences aren't equivalent, and that one could act in such a way which is harmful to oneself (yet one might still have reason to do so). It's a shame that Singer didn't entirely bite the bullet on the Repugnant Conclusion - he does in the book!
@@geniusofmozart Thanks Jeremy for your input, It was a while ago now, I am going to have to find time to look at it again bearing in mind your points.
The moment I saw the notification, I knew that this would be a good podcast.
I knew I was atheist at age 12 in 1972. Then I gave up eating animals in '77. Peter Singer had a lot to do with the latter. Legend.
@@cmpc724 it's very unfortunate for health based anti vegan arguments that this guy is still kicking after giving up animal exploitation in 1977
Your parents failed you
@@hannah-zy6il my grandfather was born in 1939 and lives a long live regardless of being vegan.
Being vegan doesn’t mean you automatically live longer
Half the foods we eat in america are overprocessed.
It’s not necessarily the meat it’s the shit the put into foods like cereals, chips, candy
@@medicisounds1384 Of course vegans living longer than meat eaters on average doesn't mean ALL vegans live long lives, that's a pretty crazy joke. Like you can say "non smokers live longer than smokers" and that isn't disproved by someone saying "Well my grandad was a non-smoker and still died young.."
@@hannah-zy6il I can agree on average vegans are more health conscious . But you can be that and eat meat and still be healthy.
Ie. A good portion if meat eaters are the type to eat a bunch of greasy and meats full of fats and sauces with little to no veggies or fruits.
However if you have an overall balanced diet eating veggies fruits and meats then why wouldn’t you be just as healthy?
Eating hard foods (usually meat) for example can lead to better jaw health. Lots of chewing helps with having stronger teeth as well.
If you look this up as human foods have gotten softer our jaw strenght has gone down as well. Our jaw bones are smaller and weaker than someone from hundreds of years ago.
Obviously they also dealt with a lot of other issues too.
From what I’ve seen or heard it’s usually pescatarians that live the longest. I think it’s a small village in japan that has the most amount of people living past 100 years.
57:00, on the subject of animal pain, Dawkins has theorized that perhaps nonhuman animals suffer more than humans out of necessity, because nonhuman animals lack the same capacity of rationality and abstract thought to cope with pain. So, for example, if I break my arm, I can cope with it by training my brain to think of a funny joke or some post hoc rationalization that fills me with pride every time my arm begins to ache. Can a horse do that, or are they stuck with the dull thought of pain?
Phil Kesler, true. This really does showcase the absolute necessity to think of others as individuals, because their interests can vary so wildly.
@@AV57 What about an animal just locked in a small cage. Some might say a human would have an advantage by mentally leaving the cage, but also it could be argued that being locked up is terrible when you have a conception of the time you are losing or life you could be living. Others might argue that with the lack of hopes and dreams of the non-human animal, if they get food and are not in pain they might be relatively happy being locked up.
@@neoepicurean3772 in water parks, dolphins and orcas etc. are (relatively) well fed and theoretically not in physical pain, yet they die much sooner than in the wild. Have you seen animals in small cages showing signs of mental suffering such as abnormal head movements, pacing, self harming?
@@kymamps9638 Yes, I've seen humans doing all those things.
@@neoepicurean3772 You might find it interesting to know that animals also exhibit their species' equivalent of those behaviors (abnormal head movements, pacing, self-harming, etc.).
I'm currently switching to full vegan with my girlfriend after being vegetarian for like 2 months or so (after your video with matt).
Alex you helped me putting the efforts into this.
Thanks a lot :)
Really cool to have Singer on. Loved the episode!!
Right on bro!
please don't go vegan without understanding its health consequences
@@sjuvanet Not sure what you mean ?
@telkmx well you can be short of some nutrients, so you have to bear that in mind and eat things like soy meat and nuts and things
@@d.l.7416 It's weird because in my family in was always common to eat nuts. Like even when i was vegetarian or a meat eater before i always eated all kinds of nuts because they taste delicious. Now i just eat more tofu than before but it didnt made much change. Which nutrients do you think i would miss actually ?
I appreciate you taking an abolitionist stance, Alex
It's the way to go to have a clear conscious. It made me a lot happier as an individual.
@@robertbouchardt3357 Would either of you mind giving me link to a good definition on this stance? I can only seem to find historical websites when I type the word in.
@@sarahneukirchen7947 its the stance that prioritises the ending of suffering in any moral scenario. I.e should I have a baby with downs. The abolitionist says no because of the immense suffering the baby will experience.
@@xsuploader How can we judge the suffering of someone else?
@@mistahkurtz2351 generally self reports of suffering suffice. Suffering isnt some abstract feeling. When people are suffering they know they are suffering. For babies one can study nociceptive pathways in the brain combined with some assessment of capability (pretty much standard in medical practice).
Peter Singer is a legend
Peter singer is an advocate of infanticide, your words worry me.
@@spaced9999in what way?
He advocates to do experiment on people with disabilities rather than animals
To collectivists maybe. No intelligent and perceptive human revers him.
Yeah a legend you scare children with
I've been following you for a long time and I'm just really proud of how far you and your ideas have come. You really helped me change my perspective on so many things in life, not the least helping me keep my sanity as I struggled with childhood religious beliefs. I can't believe that just a few months ago I was studying Singer in class and now he's talking with you. I can't wait to see where you'll be in a few years!
So glad to finally be able to listen to this after just finished reading Animal Liberation. We love you, Alex!
who cares for animals
@@sweetjello_7057 Most decent people claim to care about animals, even if they aren't consistent with it in their actions like vegans are.
I'm assuming you're in the camp of psychopaths who see non human animals as objects to be tortured and used rather than sentient beings deserving of basic rights and respect.
4 weeks ago i finished reading animal liberation, 3 weeks ago i saw a talk by him here in germany and now i see him on cosmicskeptic lol... great! :D
Singer war in DE?! Wieso, wann, wo? O.o
If you got this guy on your 6th episode. Who are you going to have on your 100th? The Jewish God? Apollo? Thor?
God is still working out how to avoid being interrogated without being accused of cowardice. Divine Hiddenness is his current ploy
Trump
Episode 35: discussing with a god on weather they can prove to themselves their own omniscience
Omg this is HUGE ! I'm liking even before watching :)
Holy crap. You got Peter Singer. Genuinely gobsmacked. 🍿🍿🍿
Wow. You did a great job pressing him. And he did a great job fighting back! Thank you for this podcast, this is one of the best real-time conversations on ethics I've seen.
Deep respect for your coming of age. Your work matters. Press on.
Your Channel keeps surprising.
I am a big fan of Singer (flashbacks from highschool)
Bless him
@Max Grassfed incredible, huge flaws... In my opinion, Singer's views on animal ethics are outdated and speciesist.
I remember seeing Prof. Singer walking around University back in the day. He always seemed busy and his lectures were thought provoking.
I wish I'd done more philosophy undergrad, but chemistry and biochemistry had me in their thrall.
Great interview, thanks - despite my being 3 years too late.
🖖🏼🇦🇺
I'm only up to 30 minutes but I find it very interesting how Singer has difficulty in viewing human action in a pure egoist fashion, as in, by definition what we do is what we prefer to do. It's something I'd say is also self evident in the terms he specified a little earlier. This is been 'obvious' for me for a long time. It's interesting to see someone so fluent in these topics have an opposing intuition.
Same! It seemed to me he was almost reluctant to admit it because it would be uncomfortable. Or, does he see something I just don't see?
@@fromeveryting29 I had the same impression. He didn't seem very logical on this one.
@@yasselesca Singer does not deny that we do what we prefer to do (see my comment above).
I applaud your willingness to speak on this Topic Alex, you are doing great good in my opinion
Came for the animals, stayed cuz of alex
Came for atheism, stayed for alex, left because veganism, then came back for animals, then stayed for knowlege
Man, Peter is so generous to Alex, somehow negotiating that lengthy bit on pleasure and motivation without using the (fully appropriate) expressions "beg the question", "tautology" or "No True Scotsman".
Great video! Well done Alex! Singer is so persuasive! He's a very hard man to disagree with.
I respect and appreciate Singer, and I appreciated him more once I accepted he was a moralist who became an ethicist. He can be stringent, but certain predicates either appeal to folk conceptions or a stretch of the categories beyond recognition. A good man and one of my favorite authors.
Next up: Richard Dawkins!
It's happened!
Looks like i need to wait another 1 and half hour to sleep.
1:21:07
I completely agree with you, CosmicSkeptic. As an abolitionist activist myself for more than a quarter century, it makes no sense IMO for me go ask people to do the morally responsible thing only minimally or part time when I can ask and explain to them why it's morally responsible to do their honest very best to completely eschew from their complicity in the needless intentional harming of animals.
Now of course, if they start this transition by doing meatless Mondays or whatever, then I'm okay with that. But how dare I (the arrogance it would be) ask someone to stop raping only on weekdays or stop being complicit in needlessly harming animals only a couple days a week!
If it's bad or wrong to do violence to innocent individuals one day a week (and it's my position that it is) then it's at least as wrong to do it more than 1 day a week.
I completely agree and actually had this exact conversation (almost word for word) with someone a few days ago. I think theres something to be said for a messenger that has conviction in their statement and not willing to faulter. People say it is not effective in making change but the example that I gave was that of religion. If an abolitionist perspective was not effective then surely religions would not be as effective in their recruiting. But as we can see there are many, many people practicing these religions even though religion does not advocate for only Sinless Sundays.
I’m not eating farmed humans, so your raping analogy draws a false equivalency. If you want to argue for the ethics of veganism you have to either refute the value claim of humans over non humans, if you can’t do this then you really can’t draw any comparisons about how we treat each other versus how we treat animals
Therefore my argument that follows is that I can agree with you that the suffering of animals is wrong, but still make the claim that the benefit we as humans (being more valuable) gain from the slavery of animals outweighs the suffering it causes of these animals. And you can not refute this by drawing comparisons about ethics regarding humans.
They discussed it here, what is the exchange rate on human slaves vs non human slaves, how many animals enslaved equates to as bad as one human enslaved.. well how can we possibly determine that, one could say one human suffering is infinitesimally times worse than any amount of animals suffering.. so one human not going hungry aka not suffering is worth making an animal suffer
@@dahadahaful Interesting. But even if I grant your notion that animals cannot be granted the same status as humans, I cannot see any argument that supports the idea that the benefits animals give us outweigh the pain that they suffer. Even leaving animal suffering out of the equation I still cannot see how animals give us any benefit. Animal agriculture is a net detriment to human beings, partially due to health concerns, but more so to ecological concerns. 60-70% of grains and vegetables that are grown in the world go to animal feed, and the water consumption is even worse. Even totally ignoring the issue of greenhouse emissions animal agriculture puts an enormous strain on resources, and adds nothing useful to our diet. All just so we can enjoy the taste of a steak?
PtolemyauletesXII those arguments while being much more compelling are quite controversial. I was simply refuting the claim that eating meat is immoral/wrong because of the suffering it causes to the animals. If it is shown that humans don’t benefit and actually are net harmed from eating meat that Is the condition under which eating meat would be wrong/immoral
Phenomenal. Simply wonderful. Just... the best!
Agreed!!!!!!!!
Very excited to hear this, I hope you asked about his metaethics!
You still running around thinking that holding veganism and subjectivism simultaneously produces contradiction?
@@Hxnsson I think that they are incompatible if that's what you mean. I would argue that veganism entails a moral objectivist position, otherwise the word lacks any clear definition beyond atomic fact.
@@PerspectivePhilosophy Could you elaborate?? I mean, I don't see why that is necessarily the case. Can't you just be very strongly affected if something doesn't go according to your moral emotions (e.g. carnist/anti-vegan stuff) yet still be convinced that these are just only your emotions?
Like, I feel it very viscerally (though while knowing it's an intersubjective experience) the smell of rotten eggs with the accompanying 'conclusion' of "this is bad"; I also feel it very viscerally (though while knowing it's an intersubjective experience) the torture of people/animals/sentient beings with the accompanying 'conclusion' of "this is bad".
@@PerspectivePhilosophy Couldn't you say the same about suffering in general? By your standards, if I am a moral subjectivist and decide to send a group of men to torture a previously uncontacted tribe of people, am I doing something immoral?
@@daddyleon id happily explain on voice chat, do you have discord?
Thank you both. Thank you so much!
This is so much more interesting than the infinite stream of garbage that is on my tv.
I admire your eloquence, Alex.
This is the best day of the month, what a host and what a guest
Really enjoyed this podcast, thanks Peter and Alex!
Alex, it seems that in your conversations with Michael Shermer and here with Peter Singer you are more willing to discuss fundamental moral ideas than your conversational partners whereas they focus on the practicality and reality of how people live their lives. I find your approach to be more convincing, but regarding terminology (desire, pleasure, preference) I think you are talking past each other.
Almost feel a bit bad for Peter Singer. Alex's position on pleasure as THE motivator is very strong.
Probably because it's kinda undeniable..at least that's my own humble opinion that seemingly haven't been persuaded away from. If you have a proper argument, please, let me hear/see it! :)
@@daddyleon Yes, I think Alex's position is undeniable. I'm not totally familiar with Singer's work, but what he presents here seems to allude to a moral position not based upon pleasure (as Alex explains well in other videos) - I just can't see that making sense when you consider our evolution as a species.
@@DanielClementYoga I think Singer agrees that we have emotions that have evolved and that they feed into our moral reactions (he talked about the 'moral dumbfounding' study from..iirc Jonathan Haidt). But besides that, I think Singer also thinks that you can use reason to come to the conclusion that ... well "you ought". But I don't see how that makes it an objective foundation (which I think Singer does seem to think), I do see how that could make your ethical system more coherent (but that's something else than a foundation, I'd say).
Well I'm denying it. (and not to side with singer as he is an mostly unknown entity to me) The word 'pleasure' on its own is very vague.
I contend that people and their situations are diverse enough that there is not any nontrivial overarching motivator that applies to all cases. Any more stringent definition of a motivator will lead to counterexamples. Human behavior is necessarily as complex as the entirety of what goes into determining human behavior.
By a more stringent definition, I'm thinking along the lines of aiming for select levels of certain neurotransmitters such as dopamine.
When I say nontrivial, I am exempting the case where the motivator is literally defined as the entirety of what makes up that human behavior. I would hope we all agree, that would be a useless definition.
Elrog3 you’re misunderstanding the meaning of pleasure in this context. Think of suffering as any unmet desire and pleasure as satisfying a desire.
Great discussion. Really appreciate it:)
Thanks for this, Alex
What a fascinating man. Flawed, but fascinating...
I never understood why so many people don't take animal rights seriously.
They are animal, we are animal, they feel pain, we feel pain, what's the big difference? And the difference must be extremely big since gasing millions of Baby chickens is completely fine and accepted in society, yet a literal joke and Satire about the Holocaust can give you some serious troubles.
We make such a big deal off racism (and rightfully so) but specisism seem to be totally fine. Not even that, but being against specisism is something some people even find laughable.
Who decides which being is worth more than others?
@UCDuCua-_ZHUr0RAgtKBEVDQ Exactly. Schools should give out Singers books to their students. Whether or not you agree with him, everyone should at least think about this topic at least once in their life.
I meet a few people that didn't even believe me when i said specisism is a real word.
So true suffering is suffering. Joy is joy. If a being can experience it. Then it should be taken into account. There is no significant difference between us, enough to ignore it.
I don't take animal rights seriously because of the very small impact it has on my life. Aside from the very strong feelings of empathy I get when I see animals with human-like characteristics, I don't see why one ought care about animal welfare.
@@candorman9444 If you care about human suffering, what is it about animals, that differentiates
their suffering from ours?
@@jhunt5578 Their inability to significantly affect my world.
Fantastic. What a coup to have Peter Singer do a long form interview. He's definitely one of the intellectual giants of our time. I hope Alex can do this as a career (after his education is complete). He could be as good as Sam Harris.
Love your abolitionist ethical principle.
Love how Alex has totally red pilled himself on animal rights ..... Well done!
Next is antinatalism
Matt Dillahunty should listen to this, and perhaps learn a thing or two..
Great discussion and I've learned tremendously and made me developed a deeper appreciation for non human animals wellbeing.
Holyshit!!!! What a guest!! What a talk
We’ve evolved consciousness which does not simply control for pleasure and pain but all sorts of high level ideas like good of the group and next of kin. It’s the abstract nature of these goals that allow them to be easily transformed, or expanded as Singer puts it, to other goals
fact of the matter is, that we share this planet with other living creatures that are equally conscious in that they are conscious, and do experience and observe reality as we do, and just observing another living creature run/crawl w/e from danger is a clear indication for their desire to live. That should be respected whether or not it is of the same species as yourseld, and no matter how great or small they are. It is never justified morally to kill unless it is absolutely necessary for survival purposes. I personally have made an effort to not even kill bugs that are considered pests, if they become an annoyance in my apartment(i rarely have insects in my current apartment) I will gently catch them and put them outside. I am aware that there are predators lurking outdoors, but I cannot risk the chance of allowing them to multiply in my apartment and end up getting sick should they end up spreading germs that can end up making me sick. It's the best solution I know so far, but at least I am sparing their lives and not killing them like I used to.
And yet, of course we care more for our own species than another. As much as I feel pity for the situation of some other animals, I care more for the well being and happiness of my fellow human beings. In reality species is non comparable to sex and race. Non-intelligent species are not comparable specifically by their nature. We are, unfortunately for the creatures we eat, omnivorous.
@@RespectTheHood it's natural to have this bias, and there's nothing immoral to feel this way, but what matters is having respect for other life when you are in it's presence.
As for our choice of foods, I have only just recently have been confronted with this at a philosophical level, so Ineed time to break the habit, and it's not going to be easy because of my budget for food each month as I am on disability, and it's much cheaper for me to get by including meat in my diet. I have seen videos of what goes on in slaughter houses for many of the livestock we typically use for food in the US, and it did make me feel bad to know that is what my money contributes to when i buy any sort of meat product. Like any habit, it will take time for me to get over it, but it's on my to do list in the future.
@@brucecook502 Whole Foods Vegan diets are very affordable. Bread, rice, beans, potatoes, pasta, root vegetables, lentils, split peas, chick peas, frozen vegetables and fruit. These are the cheapest foods on the planet. Most can be bought in bulk and stored for ages.
@@RespectTheHood Do you care to give an argument as to why prejudice amongst species is not the same as prejudice amongst sex and race? Yes you have a bias for your own species, but that bias is simply the prejudice you fail to validate.
You already went a step too far in your first and second assertions in your very first sentence:
1) *equally conscious* - scientific evidence would actually disagree with you on this one unless you have a different definition than what would be generally accepted in the field of study of consciousness.
2) *do experience and observe reality as we do* - again, nope. Dogs experience a great deal of their reality through smell in a way we never can. That right there invalidates your *fact*.
Wow I think I'm agreeing with Singer. Sure it might be a semantic issue but Semantics are important. His case for diminishing rates of pleasure and for the dilution of the word as well as it being applied to dramatically different things is compelling. I can see preferences and pleasures being different things and could see that some deterministic forces can affect preferences rather than pleasures.
Alex I love how you expose the flaw's in arguments, definitely a lot more calmly than I could, massive respect man.
Thanks Alex for the awesome work 👍 convincing as hell as always
Has Alex talked about anti-natalism anywhere? I would really like to hear his view and how that may inform his view on veganism/environmentalism.
Would be good to get the negative utilitarian philosopher David Pearce on..
Anyway great conversation/wallpaper
Yup I would also love to see how he would try to make a good counter argument to it
he has, with david benatar.
Currently studying Singer at A level and I’m really surprised you got an interview with him. Well done
Wish there were behind the scene video for this one. Such an influential man to be in the company of.
*Create a Better World by......GOING and staying healthy and VEGAN*
Louis Gedo yikes
@@sjuvanet Yibix !
:)
Perhaps indeed people follow their own pleasure, but what makes it truly a moral good is that they derive pleasure from increasing the pleasure of others.
Alex, please invite Shelly Kagan next. He is a moral philosopher, who OBLITERATED William Lane Craig in one of his debates. I think it would be super interesting, if you guys discussed different topics. As for this interview, thank you for inviting Singer, it was a very fruitful conversation.
Obliterated WL Craig? Omg! No way! (Sorry for the sarcasm). My old pair of sweatsocks could beat him in a debate, without even bothering to get a wash first.
Singer’s idea that people’s potentially general relative lack of cognisance when making certain decisions as to their outcomes feels like a really cop out way to argue against pleasure and preference being intertwined at any level. It almost seems like that whole “I am personally not cognisant of my brain as I’ve never observed it therefore it isn’t real”, and almost works to discredit reason not only as a thought process but also as a collective body of works spanning however long humans have been able to document their discoveries.
This aside, I really loved this conversation. Very cool to see you getting heavyweights on your podcast, Alex!
Rule #1 of Vegan Club
Tell everyone about Vegan Club.
Rule #2 of Vegan Club
Eat enough calories!
Rule #3 of Vegan Club
Eat enough calories god dammit!
(try to eat healthy)
Rule #1 for unoriginal fucks:
Repeat dead memes that have been spewed a thousand times over as if it's still funny in 2019.
Wow, Tiny Jungle, you've knocked that one right out of the park!
@@TheAster3 I appreciate a dead meme.
@@TheAster3
Rule #1 of Vegan Club
Tell everyone about Vegan Club.
Rule #2 of Vegan Club
Eat enough calories!
Rule #3 of Vegan Club
Eat enough calories god dammit!
(try to eat healthy)
@@tinyjungle_ We get it, you're a bitch-boy that doesn't have a response which is why you're repeating yourself to make up for your insecurity.
@@TheAster3 You must be pretty insecure to hate people so much for making a joke. Seriously, the only people who hate others for something so harmless are the people who check their own social interactions in a far too unhealthy way. Makes me sad :(
No amount of newly created happy beings, not even 1 million, can justify the minute harm caused either to existing or newly created beings, because there is no obligation to create happy beings but there is an obligation not to create suffering beings or cause harm to already existing ones. Nobody suffers if a being is not born. That's why 10 content people is always better than 1 million people with decreased well-being.
Yes, I'm even inclined to believe a population of 10 is better than a population of 1 million even if the happiness level is the same or higher! After all there's going to be a lot more reproduction in the 2nd world. I also find these kinds of scenarios fairly silly - suffering is so obviously more impactful than happiness; are these worlds of billions of happy people not dying in agony of cancer or suffering lifelong depressions and anxiety states?
It's interesting but the asymmetry between suffering and joy is so strong - contrast a world of 1 million very happy people with a world of 100 million equally happy people. Most people would say the latter is better but I don't think they'd feel that strongly about it. Now contrast a world of 1 million deeply depressed people with a world of 100 million that are just the same. That's so obviously more terrible it's immediately striking.
Wow, Peter Singer!
What an excellent debate, thx! So many disagreements yet points defended. The big Q is, where do u go from here? U cant both be right and there must be an objective truth in this.
Alex does an amazing job pressing one of the world’s great philosophers but Singer delivers a couple of tactful yet decisive refutations of Alex’s defence of egoism, once at the 17:52 mark and then again at the 38:26 mark. Singer also does a good job of clearing up a couple of Alex’s misconceptions, firstly of what philosophers usually mean by “self-evident” at the 24:39 mark and secondly in rejecting the significance of the “demandingness objection” at 1:12:56. Great interview! Two clever people!
Wow. Peter Singer. Just wow.
The probability that this video is amazing is indeed staggeringly high!
47:34 Alex's take on this comment is an absolute banguer. The best moment of the podcast imo
Looks like Singer was taken aback a bit by Alex. 🙂
Yeah it was fun to watch hahaha
yea, Alex is pretty dogmatic! Good to see the apprentices challenging the masters!
nicbongo Honestly, from the philosophical quality of the arguments, I think Alex completely outclassed Singer. I’m not sure those labels really apply here!
O'Connor's apparent lack of nerves and willingness to probe and push back are nothing short of admirable and impressive.
You could say he got spooked ;)
It seems like singer hasn’t thought about most of this that closely. Alex has him on his back foot continuously and he doesn’t seem to even foresee Alex’s counter points coming before Alex poses them.
So informative. The definition of "pleasure" that Peter gives is perfect. I always doubted the definition that Alex gave for altruistic acts. It's not real pleasure when you help someone, it's out of empathy, which is not even close.
You don't derive any good feelings from doing something good?
I know I’m a year late, but the problem with this view is in the word “empathy” itself. The definition of empathy I looked up goes as follows:
*empathy*
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
By definition, to have empathy for another person’s troubles is to understand and reciprocate their feelings. There is no coherent definition of empathy that doesn’t just involve your own feelings and ability to reciprocate feelings, so by definition empathy involves your own pleasure. There is no escaping that when you help someone else, it gives you pleasure to do so. By being empathetic, you recognize and reciprocate the feelings of that other person’s troubles, and it bothers you to know they are suffering. That is why you help them. At the very bottom of it, it always breaks down to your own pleasure. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t even bother helping the other person.
the point around 1:21:00 where you are both discussing "Meatless Mondays" just doesn't sit right with me, and I think you could actually make the argument that pushing for something like a country-wide "Meatless Mondays" could actually cause harm towards the cause in the long run, if your goal is for everybody to eventually stop eating meat. I mainly feel this way because I believe probably most people would use "Meatless Mondays", whether they admit or see this or not, just to make themselves feel morally virtuous, and it could quell any possible meat-eating guilt they had, and as a result they'd be less likely to ever go fully vegan.
I think you have your priorities out of wack.
You treat veganims as the goal in and off itself, while veganism is merely a means toe achieve a goal.
Meatless mondays may be more effective overall achieving the ultimate goal.
Amazing podcast, Alex. Thank you so much for your contribution to the world of philosophy and the ease of access thereof.
27:11 - Singers response to this is so important
Separation is an illusion. All is connected. The mind is a lower faculty of self, a tool. Feeling is a lower faculty of self, a tool. When one becomes cognizant of conscious singularity, the self that discerns and feels via the faculties of self (mind/reasoning, feeling/intuition) can then extend its own pleasures and hedonistic values to all things outside of itself, because it recognizes that even oneself is outside of oneself, thus all is self.
You should investigate evolutionary symbiological ecology. We evolved as symbiotic animals. A large part of our brain is devoted to ensuring mutual ecosystem symbiosis, not individual consciousness. Psychological pleasure is very different from sensory pleasure, and more importantly psychological pain is very different from sensory pain. Mr. Singer points to the fact that reflection will certainly give self-evident truth in that we will have reflection from our sensory pleasure and pain far beyond psychological. In fact, our brains are developed to clear psychological experience while sensory experience becomes part of our consciousness.
Horrifies and pleases me to see Peter Singer struggle, if not feel utterly uncomfortable, coming up against a brilliant young mind. Alex, I’m more convinced by your arguments...by a country mile. I didn’t want to.
Andrew Shaw my thoughts as well.
1:08:06 - Check .... mate
I'm at 35:05 now, and I think we have a problem with the definition of "pleasure". What do you mean by pleasure ? You should pin point what feeling are you talking about, or express the range of feelings it includes. Cuz i have the feeling you use that term loosly to describe anything that you decide to do.
If someone decide to kill himself to save someone else, or endure torture to save someone else then get killed, i'm not so sure you could talk about a feeling of "pleasure". That person just decided that it was the right thing to do, even though he knew he could get more pleasure by being selfish and not sacrifing himself.
When i prevent myself from doing something i'd like, i'm not doing so to get "pleasure", cuz i know i'd get more pleasure doing that thing, and I can see myself turning off that "guilt" feeling, so it won't affect me.
When I waste hours of my life answering carnist comments, i'm not doing it for my "pleasure". I hate it. Really hate it. Yet i do it when i feel it will be effective for my goals. But sometimes i'm like "You know what ? Fuck it. I'm gonna play a videogame" and i get way more pleasure doing that and it outweight the "remorse" i could get, if i even get it.
Singer unpicked Cosmic Skeptics argument at around the 38 minute mark. Worth watching. He's a skilled logician.
Very good and indepth thought on Animals, birds and plants, well done, keep it up!
birds are animals
expectation Earthling Ed reality Peter "is he actually vegan" Singer
GeneralArmorus, Singer is very good at displaying the the prejudice of speciesism in most moral philosophies. Outside of that, I really wouldn’t advise anyone interested in the moral topic of animals to go to Singer, unless they’re just dying to get the utilitarian argument.
#govegan #fortheenvironment #fortheanimals #foryourhealth #earthlings #plantbasedgains
Congratulations on having such a massive figure on the show!!
Why can't it be somewhere in the middle?
I.e. we derive our understanding of pleasure being good and pain being bad from egoism / subjective experience but then empathy / reasoning allows us to appreciate that other beings experience these things and therefore pleasure is good and pain is bad for those beings too. And we can extrapolate this to what to all intents and purposes serves as an objective moral principle without actually necessarily being one (or what Peter Singer would describe as being "self evident")
This does still allow for true altruism because this empathy allows us to want to minimise overall suffering. And my answer to the question posed around the number of people vs the amount of pleasure would be that instead of measuring overall happiness as a sum of individual suffering we should strive for the highest average amount of pleasure. So 100 beings with 100 points is better than 100,000 with 99 points as the average is higher. This is not egoist as it does consider others, and still considers overall happiness.
And in the other hypothetical; of aliens pleasure outweighing our pain I think this is un-sound. We shouldn't, and as a vegan I don't, adhere to the principle because the suffering of others is not outweighed by the pleasure I would derive. It is because it is unnecessary. I weigh up necessity against the pain and suffering. Not pleasure
I wonder if ever just wants someone to ask what his favourite colour is
Im so glad you exist
oh, but Peter Singer. The good of the spider is NOT the good of the fly.
Amazing you had him on, amazing how much confidence you have respectfully disagreeing with him. LOVE.
I had heard of Singer and his work, and I admired him from a distance. This is the first time I have watched an in-depth interview with him. I have a lot less respect for him, now. He's still not a particularly bad person, in my opinion, but he's a misguided ideologue.
Great job Alex, I wish you pressed Singer on the hypocritical apologist "I eat cheese if it came by accident" part you left till the very end but otherwise you did fantastic.
What difference does it make? The damage is already done.
@@juowy You're right, it probably doesn't matter, unless perhaps non-vegans see you do it and get the idea that maybe you dont actually take being vegan seriously, thereby possibly taking veganism less seriously themselves
@@yams7355 good point
How can cheese come by accident?
@@nohopestage Believe me, if you ask a restaurant or whatever to veganize a dish by for example excluding cheese or an egg, they FREQUENTLY mess up. Then you either ask them to bring a new plate with the correct order, or eat everything on the plate but the cheese or egg, or eat it all.
The fact that an experience is "mine" is secondary, it has no bearing on the character of that experience. All being "mine" means is that it is causally connected in a stream of conscious experiences with certain thoughts, memories, desires, etc. A experience, such as a painful burn has a certain intrinsic character, in this case an unpleasant one, regardless of who "owns" it, so you can easily reason that, insofar other beings experience a painful burn, it will have the same "bad" character as well. Just like, for example, a car will have the same engine power regardless of the owner. "Owning" it is really just a thought, no one actually owns any experience.
Amazing conversation, two truly smart men talking about important subjects.
1:24:38
This is an excellent point to go into much greater depth in a future podcast or video.
I have a lot to say on this but I'll keep this very brief: in my opinion vegan living (and I'm certainly not conflating that with only plant based dieting.....the two are not at all the same though the general public sees them as synonymous) is not about perfection; it's about doing your very, very best in the most honest way possible for you.
As I said, this is simply the position without the full, lengthy argument.
This is perfect Alex. I, too, am an abolitionist. In the eyes of the victims and from an environmental perspective, this is a crisis, and in order to be morally consistent, I feel we should treat it as such.
I don't believe unselfishness,, self-sacrifice for the sake of others is pleasure. Altruism is something that can be develop if the society promote it. Many human societies have altruism but not England or the US these are selfish societies concern with self pleasure. Still humans can be altruistic
Not first
This is awesome.
Pleasure is not usually the motivation to donate a kidney. But avoiding the guilt of knowing you could've helped someone and didn't... Is that not acting in self interest?
Yes, we always act in self-interest.
@@gregoryrowlerson8457 To understand Singer's position and one of the problems with Alex's psychological egoism we need to remember that, while we always do what we want to do, sometimes our reasons for wanting to do something are based on other people's interests, not our own. The soldier who throws himself over a grenade to save his colleagues does what he wants to do, but he does it for others' interests. The solder who runs out of the room to save his life leaving his comrades to die does what he wants to do but he does it for his own self-interest.
@@JohnThomas yes, but as Alex explained, or at least suggested, the soldier makes a subconscious decision in that moment that the future pain of living without having jumped on the grenade would outweigh the incredible pain in its immediacy of killing himself via the grenade (whilst saving others). So it is still in self interest, less pain for him now, rather than more (hypothetically) in the long run. It's a rather complicated issue though.
@@gregoryrowlerson8457 Yes, that's a response one could make. But it seems more plausible to suggest that the soldier sacrifices his life because of the benefit it brings to others rather than because he is worried about feeling guilty now or in the future.
It's rare to donate a kidney to an unknown person with absolutely no recognition from anyone. And maybe such a person still often does it for personal satisfaction. But who are we to claim that no one can or does?
Singer's stance on ranking suffering is inherently flawed and speciesist. horses feel worse pain that humans, they have thinner skin and more nerve endings. why do we use humans as the baseline?
Great episode! Btw your skin has been looking amazing since you’ve gone vegan
Ahh drop the vegan cure all preaching and speak to diatrist or dictor if you have problems with your skin..
Thereby not saying that your diet is without great influence for your general health but its how you put it together... Vegan or not.
@@svendtang5432 it's pretty widely accepted that diary gives people breakouts etc.
Ryan White Funny, my skin started looking better the further from puberty and more "adult" i became. Am i vegan? And now as i am getting quite a bit older, it's getting more saggy and wrinkled. Am i vegan? If i changed from one to another at either point would that have been the reason? If i hadn't changed diet then what would be the reason? Causation vs correlation, look it up!
Estrogen is associated with increased collagen production, skin thickness, skin hydration, wound healing, and improved barrier function. Tofu, soy, flax, wheatbran, berries, cruciferous vegetables, sesame seeds (tahini, hummus etc) all high in phytoestrogens. Just a thought re veganism & nice skin
@@misato7213 Estrogen is not the same as phytoestrogen. That is a myth that began in the body builder community that has been disproven many times over and the only study that showed a problem with phytoestrogens were in sheep.
The only benefits of phytoestrogen that I know of that have the support of peer reviewed studies are that they possibly protect from prostate, ovarian, and breast cancers. While all those foods have health benefits, it's important not to use pseudoscience to promote veganism, since there are many proven benefits or veganism that have peer reviewed evidence.