07/03/2004: "The most grotesque philosopher alive"

Peter Singer, the Princeton professor who doubles as the Alfred Rosenberg of the anti-humanism movement, has been heard from again in an interview with the Independent of the UK. Singer has been lauded by the such media outlets as The New Yorker as "the most influential philosopher alive," a man of brilliant intellect, and yet he is regularly guilty of some of the most blinding moral and intellectual obtuseness. The interview in question illustrates two examples:

"You shouldn't say animals," he says in a level tone when I raise the topic, "to distinguish between humans and non-humans. We are all animals." This objection captures Singer's thoughts in a neat sound bite. He thinks there is nothing special about being human. "Every living thing has preferences, and those preferences need to be taken into account," he says. "Non-human animals can't be left out of utilitarian equation."

Though Singer contends there are no essential moral differences between humans and non-humans, how about this: humans are capable of moral choice, non-humans are not. I refuse to torture my cat because doing so is wrong. My cat tries to bite my bare feet every chance she gets just because she wants to. Is that distinction really so hard for a moral philosopher to grasp?

Ah, you say, but Singer doesn't talk about moral choices, he talks about "preferences," which all living beings have. But all that does is make a mockery of what Singer does for a living. If there are no moral choices, then why should any creature's "preferences" be privileged by any other? And if you have a preference for blue and I prefer red, why should either of those preferences be respected as anything more than an expression of personal taste? Where's the "moral" in "moral philosopher"?

Singer goes on to talk like a typical utilitarian when he says that "pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented or minimised, regardless of the race, sex or species of the being that suffers." That's his primary basis for deciding between preferences: I may have a taste for filet mignon, but because it would run roughshod over the cow's preference to remain alive, I have to stick to asparagus. But�and here's where the accusation that Singer's just a Nazi in tweed clothing comes in�he conveniently forgets this principle whenever humans don't measure up to his standards:

He continues, "All I say about severely disabled babies is that when a life is so miserable it is not worth living, then it is permissible to give it a lethal injection. These are decisions that should be taken by parents�never the state�in consultation with their doctors." This is, he believes, already happening. "What do people think amniocentesis and the selective abortion of Down's Syndrome foetuses are? All I am saying is, why limit the killing to the womb? Nothing magical happens at birth." It is a small step, he seems to think, from abortion to infanticide. "Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare�but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion."

The reference to Down's Syndrome gives away the game. Anyone who's known Down's Syndrome kids know that they aren't in pain and aren't suffering. Most live lives that, while shorter than others, are at least as happy if not more so. Singer includes them among the poor unfortunates whose lives are "so miserable" as to not be worth living, not because they are in pain or suffering, but because they don't meet his professorial standards. So what's the IQ cut-off, Doc? At what point do we say that a person isn't smart enough to have a right to life in Singerland? For that matter, people with Down's Syndrome, if allowed to grow up, will have considerably greater intellectual capacity than any non-human. Yet they can be killed even after birth because their quality of life doesn't get the Singer Seal of Approval. What does that do to the carefully constructed arguments for animal rights?

This is the "most influential philosopher alive"? Then heaven help philosophy.

Replies: 6 Comments

on Saturday, July 3rd, Baillie said

If you can bear with another personal story�.

My brother went into acute respiratory failure last September at forty-five years old. By the time I got the phone call, he was on a respirator in the ICU of a small hospital several hours from my home. Think SARS without the contagious aspect and you�ll get some idea of what condition he was in: as the Merck site puts it, �the survival rate for patients with severe ARDS who receive appropriate treatment is about 60%; if the severe hypoxemia of ARDS is not recognized and treated, cardiopulmonary arrest occurs in 90% of patients.

There was the usual story: long drives, long nights, phone ringing at any old hour - �You�d better come and do you want us to resuscitate if his heart stops before you get here?� - that sort of thing, but he kept reviving despite every expectation to the contrary. There began to be a little hope, if only the ICU staff could get him off the sedatives long enough to wean him off the respirator. But you can�t wean someone on a respirator off sedatives if he�s in the full grip of an ICU psychosis. Every time they tried, he�d wake up just enough that it took most of the staff to keep him in the bed. Whatever world he was in wasn�t a nice one, and the exertion of having a knock-down-drag-out with the nurses would then send his oxygen levels plummeting and I�d get another phone call.

But he kept living and by the time a month had passed, they�d figured out the right combination of anti-psychotics and he had begun to respond a little � the right way, I mean. So we began to think he might make it. That�s when I made a major mistake and had him transferred to the ICU of a hospital only 45 minutes away instead of three hours. A TEACHING hospital, mind you.

To trim an extremely long tale, something somewhere got dropped, anti-psychotic-wise, and by the end of that first week in the new hospital a doctor ambushed me and informed me my brother was going to die anyway, so I should let him 'die with dignity'. There were other things factoring into her opinions, but the main thing was that they couldn't get him off the paralytic they had him on because as soon as he'd start to wake up, he'd go into a psychotic episode and that would start him crashing again. So they needed my permission to bring him off the paralytic long enough for him to be able to breath on his own, then they�d pull the life-support. Otherwise, it would be legally murder.

What 'dignity' had to do with somebody suffocating to death, I failed to see, but the ambush took me utterly by surprise. I tried to tell them what the other hospital had done and how he had been improving when this hospital got him, but it was to no avail - he had blood clots now and probably had brain-damage from all the crashing and he was probably having seizures, and blah, blah, blah. I, being of a somewhat timid nature, meekly left the ICU intending to come back the next day to see him taken off life-support and we came home and started calling relatives.

It took a while, but finally by late that night, my brain had kicked in along with a lot of pent-up rage over recent events in the news*, until I was practically glowing in the dark, I was so furious, and I expressed that fury in a blunt letter to the lot of them, which my husband dutifully delivered by hand early the next morning. ("If you can make him comfortable enough to die, why can't you make him comfortable enough to live?" "We can always kill him later; we can't resurrect him.") This was not enough to sate the newly savage Baillie, however, and so the nurses got an earful when I got to the hospital, which resulted in a long discussion in the meeting room.

So they put him on the anti-psychotics he should have been on all along, in a week or so he was transferred out of the ICU to Intermediate. This, of course, meant a whole new string of doctors, and the �What will his QUALITY of life be?� business to endure, but it was just tough cookies. One or the other of us showed up there every day, right on through Christmas, and he got off oxygen and then he had his trach-tube removed and started eating again and went to physical therapy and one January day, lo and behold, he went home. Wobbly, frail, confused, forgetful, but home.

Two months later he was buying books and shopping at Walmart. He�ll be on a lot of medicine for the rest of his life, but that�s a minor detail. Last time I visited him, he took me out to show me the garden he�d started � and when he started telling me how Bush was a harmless ninny and it was all Cheney�s fault, well, then I knew the cure was complete.

And the reference to the news*? If I hadn't been seething for weeks over the attempted murder of Terry Schiavo, my brother would now be ashes.

I�ve been rather fierce ever since.

on Sunday, July 4th, Athanasius said

Baillie, that's a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it with me. May I make a request? Because a lot of visitors to this site don't read the comments, I'd like to put your story in the main column. It's a wonderful testimony to the power of truth (not ot mention love, perseverance, and plain old fashioned anger!). Just let me know. And thanks again.

on Sunday, July 4th, Baillie said

You're welcome to use it however you'd like.

on Tuesday, July 6th, Marty said

Wonderful wonderful story. Thank you so much for sharing and God Bless your family.

Having recently gone through similar drama with my father in law, my wife and i had the discussion that all couples must -- what to do if thinks look so bleak, and the doctor points at the plug in the wall.

We disagreed in our answers, but i emphatically made it clear that i did not want my wife to do anything but keep praying for a miracle. Because once you no longer beleive in miracles, what's the point of living?

on Wednesday, July 7th, Marion R. said

A good friend and I were ordering Chinese. I asked her whether we should get soup along with our order. Her reply was "whatever". I pressed her and she said "I don't care". I kept insisting, and finally she announced "I really have no preference!". Later that night I smothered her with a pillow.

on Thursday, July 8th, s.f. danckaert said

LoL.

But seriously, nice post. The incongruity of Singer's ethics of abortion and exposure compared to his analysis of animal rights is beyond telling -- it is grossly illogical. Such is the case for a number of people, though: they will take time off of their job to protest for X animal and its habitat (not a bad thing, mind you), but then, on the way home, they will scream at someone who is displaying a picture of a tortured fetus.