#peter-singer — Public Fediverse posts

Peter Singer is a Consequentialist Hedonic Utilitarian Ethicist.

It's his professional job to be good at ethics and teach others about ethics.

He thinks the best ethics are judged by the consequences, and that good is the best for the most people.

He has a podcast. It's probably great. He is cool. I only just heard about it.

But this is his website.

The podcast is offered on Spotify and Apple.

It has an AI chat bot that isn't even prompted well to sound like Peter for no reason at all.

It has a embed for a substack.

That embed for a substack is expired because it's run by a thing called Supascribe that is presumably some software as a service scam.

Below that is a cookie permissions banner which is asking for permission to spy on you for advertisers even though there are no actual adverts on the site.

There are links at the top and bottom to Facebook and Instagram.

There is no RSS feed embedded in the page.

I repeat: Peter Singer is actually pretty cool, and he thinks about ethics sanely.

This is the web we have built. Where a professional Consequentialist Hedonic Utilitarian Ethicist does all this.

#web #ethics #peterSinger

𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝑵𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒅𝒔 - 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑶𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑶𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒔: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑨𝒏𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒔 𝒗𝒔. 𝑴𝒂𝒏

And when the child cannot speak for itself?

Humanity's first global lawsuit! In this 10th-century Islamic fable, animals put mankind on trial for the crimes of the extraction economy.

https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/waywords_podcast/original-omelas-case-animals-versus-man/

#podcast #literature #arabicliterature #medievalliterature #petersinger #ursulakleguin #donnaharaway #aristotle #francisbacon #jacquesderrida #speciesism

@max_muehsal #PeterSinger
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer?wprov=sfti1 … für die, die ihn nicht kennen sollten.

@max_muehsal

Obgleich und weil ich mich sehr für die Bewahrung der Mitwelt engagiere, betone ich die Bedeutung der Menschenwürde.

Diese wird nach meiner Auffassung durch die ethische Gleichsetzung von Menschen mit Tieren, wie sie auch Peter Singer vertritt, leider relativiert.

Und, nein, da gehe ich nicht mit.

@Teh_Doc_Inan @Sabine1963

#Mitwelt #Menschenwürde #Mensch #Tier #PeterSinger

Peter Singer the Baby Killer.

https://informed.org/infanticide-were-not-talking-abortion/

#petersinger #philosophy

Ah, the #NYRB, where every topic imaginable gets the same amount of intellectual hot air. 🎈 Peter Singer must be thrilled to be sandwiched between climate change and literary gifts. 📚🌍 But hey, at least there's a shop! 💸
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/04/24/circling-the-good-thomas-nagel/ #IntellectualDiscussion #PeterSinger #ClimateChange #LiteraryGifts #HackerNews #ngated

#petersinger asked "Would you save a drowning child at the small cost of getting your shirt wet?"

If your answer is yes, you should sacrifice small luxuries like eating out and redirect the savings to #charity .

A tough pill to swallow. But if true, a society that views donation to non-profits as just optional and praiseworthy is evil. It led to #wealthgap , #climatechange , #enshittification and #latestagecapitalism .

Do you agree?
#philosophy #humanitarianaid #ethics #overconsumption

Consider The #Turkey: philosopher’s new book might put you off your festive bird – and that’s exactly what he would want - Australian #philosopher #PeterSinger has been a champion of animal rights for more than 50 years. His basic philosophical position has remained the same: the suffering of animals is just as important as the suffering of human beings. https://theconversation.com/consider-the-turkey-philosophers-new-book-might-put-you-off-your-festive-bird-and-thats-exactly-what-he-would-want-245500 #sentient #vegetarian #animalwelfare #animalrights #ethics

Why #Religion Does more #Harm than #Good in the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp3pW_2E2BM

This video consists of #critical #arguments against #religious #doctrines and #ideologies, presented by #ChistopherHitchens, #DanielDennett, #LawrenceKrauss, #PeterSinger, #RichardDawkins & #RickyGervais.

#atheism #atheist #christianity

#PeterSinger
"climate protesters blocking 1000's of people fr driving their kids to school or going to work is more ethically worrisome than disrupting e routine of those w power to reduce #greenhousegas emissions.. #politicians & #bureaucrats in their official capacity .. #Unethical #activism, even when nonviolent, can easily spur counter-protests tt spiral to violence. The principle of #proportionality can serve as a useful guide to factors tt protesters shld consider"
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2859761/protesting-ethically-for-the-planet

9 months after SBF conviction, Peter Singer defends effective altruism in debate - According to the prominent voice for effective altruism, Sam Bankman-Fri... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/sbf-conviction-peter-singer-effective-altruism #effectivealtruism #sambankman-fried #petersinger #alicecrary #ftx

Stop Gambling Our Future for Meat Deforestation

Renowned animal rights ethicist philosopher Peter Singer asserts that our dietary choices, particularly our consumption of meat and dairy, are jeopardising the Earth’s future. These industries contribute significantly to environmental degradation, deforestation, and greenhouse gas emissions, intensifying the impacts of climate change. By indulging in hamburgers and other meat-based products, we are not only compromising our health but also the wellbeing of our planet. For a more sustainable and compassionate future, consider boycotting meat and dairy. Choose to be vegan for the animals and to save our planet #Boycottmeat be #vegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/ge4S2oHF5oY

Originally published by The Conversation June 15, 2023 and republished here under the Creative Commons Licence, read original.

Peter Singer, Princeton University

I wasn’t aware of climate change until the 1980s — hardly anyone was — and even when we recognised the dire threat that burning fossil fuels posed, it took time for the role of animal production in warming the planet to be understood.

Today, though, the fact that eating plants will reduce your greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most important and influential reasons for cutting down on animal products and, for those willing to go all the way, becoming vegan.

A few years ago, eating locally — eating only food produced within a defined radius of your home — became the thing for environmentally conscious people to do, to such an extent that “locavore” became the Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year” for 2007.

If you enjoy getting to know and support your local farmers, of course, eating locally makes sense. But if your aim is, as many local eaters said, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you would do much better by thinking about what you are eating, rather than where it comes from. That’s because transport makes up only a tiny share of the greenhouse gas emissions from the production and distribution of food.

With beef, for example, transport is only 0.5% of total emissions. So if you eat local beef you will still be responsible for 99.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions your food would have caused if you had eaten beef transported a long distance. On the other hand, if you choose peas you will be responsible for only about 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions from producing a similar quantity of local beef.

And although beef is the worst food for emitting greenhouse gases, a broader study of the carbon footprints of food across the European Union showed that meat, dairy and eggs accounted for 83% of emissions, and transport for only 6%.

More generally, plant foods typically have far lower greenhouse gas emissions than any animal foods, whether we are comparing equivalent quantities of calories or of protein. Beef, for example, emits 192 times as much carbon dioxide equivalent per gram of protein as nuts, and while these are at the extremes of the protein foods, eggs, the animal food with the lowest emissions per gram of protein, still has, per gram of protein, more than twice the emissions of tofu.

Animal foods do even more poorly when compared with plant foods in terms of calories produced. Beef emits 520 times as much per calorie as nuts, and eggs, again the best-performing animal product, emit five times as much per calorie as potatoes.

Favourable as these figures are to plant foods, they leave out something that tilts the balance even more strongly against animal foods in the effort to avoid catastrophic climate change: the “carbon opportunity cost” of the vast area of land used for grazing animals and the smaller, but still very large, area used to grow crops that are then fed — wastefully, as we have seen — to confined animals.

Because we use this land for animals we eat, it cannot be used to restore native ecosystems, including forests, which would safely remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. One study has found that a shift to plant-based eating would free up so much land for this purpose that seizing the opportunity would give us a 66% probability of achieving something that most observers believe we have missed our chance of achieving: limiting warming to 1.5℃.

Another study has suggested that a rapid phaseout of animal agriculture would enable us to stabilise greenhouse gases for the next 30 years and offset more than two-thirds of all carbon dioxide emissions this century. According to the authors of this study:

The magnitude and rapidity of these potential effects should place the reduction or elimination of animal agriculture at the forefront of strategies for averting disastrous climate change.

Climate change is undoubtedly the biggest environmental issue facing us today, but it is not the only one. If we look at environmental issues more broadly, we find further reasons for preferring a plant-based diet.

The clearing and burning of the Amazon rainforest means not only the release of carbon from the trees and other vegetation into the atmosphere, but also the likely extinction of many plant and animal species that are still unrecorded.

This destruction is driven largely by the prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat, which makes it more profitable to clear the forest than to preserve it for the indigenous people living there, establish an ecotourism industry, protect the area’s biodiversity, or keep the carbon locked up in the forest. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet for the sake of hamburgers.

Joseph Poore, of the University of Oxford, led a study that consolidated a huge amount of environmental data on 38,700 farms and 1,600 food processors in 119 countries and covered 40 different food products. Poore summarised the upshot of all this research thus:

A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Poore doesn’t see “sustainable” animal agriculture as the solution:

Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.

Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our climate and our environment should become vegans for those reasons alone.

Doing so would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution, save water and energy, free vast tracts of land for reforestation, and eliminate the most significant incentive for clearing the Amazon and other forests.

This is an edited extract from Animal Liberation Now by Peter Singer (Penguin Random House).

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics in the Center for Human Values, Princeton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Originally published by The Conversation June 15, 2023 and republished here under the Creative Commons Licence, read original.

ENDS

Read more about human health, veganism, nutrition and why you should #Boycottpalmoil, #Boycottmeat for your own and the planet’s health

Gursky’s Spectral Tarsier Tarsius spectrumgurskyae

Gursky’s spectral tarsiers AKA Wusing of North Sulawesi are vulnerable due to palm oil and timber deforestation. Take action for them and boycott palm oil!

Forest Protection Equals Climate Protection

Forests offer climate protection and safeguard indigenous peoples, endangered animals and rare plants. Deforestation is a major threat. Boycott palm oil!

Beautiful and Doomed: Saving Bangladesh’s Langurs From Extinction

Critically endangered Phayre’s langurs and endangered capped langurs of Bangladesh, are interbreeding raising concerns about their survival, take action!

Western Parotia Parotia sefilata

Western Parotias AKA Arfak Parotias are stunning bird-of-paradise of West Papua known for their mesmerising dances. Palm oil and mining ecocide are threats

Jaguars vs Cows: JBS Fuelling Biodiversity Collapse in Brazil’s Forests

Global Witness report finds JBS, the world’s largest meat company, is directly linked to deforestation in the Amazon and Pantanal putting jaguars at risk

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

> .. the New York Times greeted the book.. warmly, with a flattering front-page Sunday book review by the philosopher #PeterSinger, who called Pinker’s tome “supremely important” and a “masterly achievement” (October 9, 2011), along with other positive responses. It reminds me of the welcome given #ClaireSterling’s #TheTerrorNetwork in 1981, a book that fit.. the #Reagan..’s attempt to demonize the Soviet Union.. allegedly behind the world’s terrorists (who included #NelsonMandela..

Peter Singer was geïnterviewd in de Volkskrant en wordt weer veelvuldig door veganisten gedeeld. Bij deze nog even een herinnering dat Peter Singer niet strijd voor dierenrechten, maar voor de manier waarop dieren worden uitgebuit: https://youtu.be/xXGdt4WnDZc?si=O9caYTVE9r095gAP&t=1023 #PeterSinger #Dierenrechten

Een scherp onderscheid tussen mens en dier is er niet, stelt #PeterSinger, ’s werelds invloedrijkste levende #filosoof. ‘#Vlees eten toont een zeker gebrek aan #empathie voor andere bewuste wezens’

#volkskrant #speciesisme #carnisme #leesvoer #tryvegan #plantaardig

https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/de-vraag-is-niet-kunnen-dieren-nadenken-of-kunnen-ze-praten-maar-kunnen-ze-lijden~ba79204b/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F

If I had the means, land, resources, etc. to create an #AnimalSanctuary, I think I would create a #cat sanctuary. For all the poor, old, unwanted cats out there, to potentially be their forever home, or possibly their temporary home before they get adopted in a true forever home with a loving family. I would need a lot of fencing and wire to ensure no wildlife encounters and escape occurs! 😂

Second on my list would be a #chicken and #rooster sanctuary (kept separately of course*), where they can have space to live out their lives in peace. I have been thinking about chickens and all other forms of birds lately, in terms of a #veganism perspective. A recent estimate** in terms of the number of land animals killed for food (that huge number you always see #vegans ranting on about), is now estimated at 92.2 billion for 2023. The majority of those individuals would be birds of one sort of another, primarily chickens. 🐔🐣

Thinking about it some more, I came across this piece by #KarenDavis of #UnitedPoultryConcerns and the unfortunate views of #PeterSinger*** when it comes to his viewpoints regarding chickens:

https://www.upc-online.org/thinking/peter_singer.html

I say unfortunate, as the "Father of Animal Liberation****", it really saddens me to see his views exposed so clearly and his disdain for chickens shown so plainly. I suppose he is being practical/centrist/unemotive/etc. in his views, and perhaps he is trying to reach more people, by appearing more flexible and open, so that others out there that are not yet #vegan would consider the option of becoming vegan and embrace this philosophy for life. But really, not to be that #AnnoyingVegan, but he almost sounds like a #Flexitarian, being open to eat what he can when travelling, not upsetting hosts when invited over to dinner, and being ok with backyard hens and their eggs.

I guess it is easy to bash on someone that has done so much for the animal rights movement, but I do think that it is important to call out people, no matter how loved or famous, if some of their views dont correspond to the rest of their actions and stated beliefs and philosophies.*****

In the meanwhile, I will continue imagining all the animals I will try and save one day, but really I am more grateful for the many (though not enough) sanctuaries out there that are currently giving animals of all sorts (least of all, chickens) a safe presence, away from the living nightmare that is the reality of the majority of their species existence. 🌱

#GoVegan
#AnimalRights
#VeganForTheAnimals

*Probably easier than trying to desex poultry!
**https://blog.humanesociety.org/2023/06/more-animals-than-ever-before-92-2-billion-are-used-and-killed-each-year-for-food.html
***I have tooted about him before: https://aus.social/@Pece/110410557870768867
****I think this is given to him by others, I have never seen him claim this title.
*****Not that I am famous, but I am happy to be called out by my actions and words if they are not aligned and happy to make corrections accordingly.

#petersinger #voedsel #plantaardig #transitie #destandaard

"Door vleesconsumptie te belasten zouden regeringen genoeg graan kunnen vrijmaken om de ‘wanhopige behoeftigen wereldwijd’ te voeden. In één beweging zouden ze ook de lokale lucht- en watervervuiling reduceren, de uitstoot van broeikasgassen terugdringen en de gezondheid van hun bevolking opkrikken."

https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20230809_96620737

@housepanther I am not sure of the effectiveness, but some #vegans are pushing a #ClimateChange angle because the "do it for the animals/they feel pain/they suffer" has been spoken about for decades, from the original founders of #TheVeganSociety to #PeterSinger in 1975 with his book #AnimalLiberation to the present (and interestingly his update to the book which got released this year has the climate as a big topic). Even though that is the best reason to #GoVegan, it seems to have increased the total vegans in the world to a few percentage points, which is a very slow change of pace for a movement that wants total abolition of animal exploitation.

Going with the climate change angle might lead to more people realising that #veganism is the long term solution. If not for the animals sake, then at least for humanities very own survival, since the contributions to animal agriculture to the environment is not insignificant.

You can’t spell “supreme corruption” without “Supreme Court.” Legit.
#SCOTUS #JudicialEthics #LeonardLeo #FederalistSociety #HarlanCrow #PeterSinger #QuidProQuo #ClarenceThomas #SamuelAlito #JohnRoberts #NeilGorsuch #BrettKavanaugh #AmyConeyBarrett

#Kuuntelusuositus / #Katselusuositus:

#YleMondo lla alko juuri #HardTalk, jossa vieraana Peter Singer.

#PeterSinger in #BBC Hard Talk.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct0c33

#Singer #eläinoikeudet #eläintenoikeudet #AnimalLiberation #OikeuttaEläimille #AnimalRights #filosofia #philosophy #etiikka #moraali #morality #ethics #anmal #eläin #animals #eläimet

@chavan Thank you for sharing this. I am not a subscriber to the Atlantic so I am unable to read the article, but it is good to see #PeterSinger get a decent amount of coverage for his upcoming book. I have a few gripes about his certain leniency to certain conditions where he says eating animals is ok (I am curious if he alluded to that in this article?), but I am sure that's just the #AnnoyingVegan in me talking. 😂

Philosopher #PeterSinger, author of #AnimalLiberation is releasing an updated book called #AnimalLiberationNow. Here is an interview he had with #ZoëCorbyn:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/21/philosopher-peter-singer-theres-no-reason-to-say-humans-have-more-worth-or-moral-status-than-animals

I look forward to reading both the old and updated book, and see how much/little has changed. Looks like it will give a bigger spotlight on the #ClimateEmergency aspect in relation to the animal agricultural industry.

A few things I am disappointed about, from a #vegan perspective (#AnnoyingVegan bias incoming):

1. Describing himself as 'flexibly vegan'.
2. Eating oysters (even if oyster farming is apparently an environmentally sustainable industry).
3. His defense of 'consientious omnivores'. Q&A in full:

"Conscientious omnivores oppose factory farming but continue to eat animal products from farmers who treat their animals well and don’t subject them to suffering. Do they get a pass?
Honestly, I can’t show that they are wrong. Assume that the cows wouldn’t have existed if they weren’t going to be sold for their meat and the conscientious omnivores investigate how their food is produced, and can be confident that the animals really do have good lives and are killed painlessly and without suffering – then I think they do get a pass. They’re allies in the movement against factory farming, and a world of conscientious omnivores would produce much less meat and dairy products, with vastly less suffering."

Let me expand on point 3:🧵

#vegans #veganism #GoVegan #VeganForTheAnimals #AnimalRights

#PeterSinger: Fix Your #Diet, Save the #Planet

"But even if there were 10 times as many #vegans in the world, that would not be enough to save the planet or end factory #farming. Persuading the majority of the world’s affluent people to at least halve their #consumption of #animal products would achieve much more"
https://web.archive.org/web/20230425080032/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/earth-day-climate-change-meat-vegan.html

"We can do something significant for the planet every time we eat"

@philosophy #AnimalEthics #food #environment #conservation #vegetarianism #veganism

I am happy to see the #NewYorkTimes opinion piece by #PeterSinger is making the rounds and is being tooted by lots of people here on #mastodon.

A shame he talks about only a reduction in animal meat consumption as opposed to total elimination, but I guess baby steps is the way to get to most normal and nice people. 🤔

Also exciting to see he has an updated book coming out called #AnimalLiberationNow. Something I will be very keen to check out (though maybe I should read the original and compare notes 😂).

#Vegan #Vegans #Veganism #VeganForTheAnimals #GoVegan #AnimalRights

#Longtermism is #bullshit, saying this on here is obviously just preaching to the choir. However labeling it as a part of #EffectiveAltruism is also bullshit. It’s bullshit that the longtermism crowd themselves started.

#PeterSinger, who at least in my mind is the first name that comes up in relation to Effective Altruism, has pretty much called out that the two world views are if not in direct opposition, then at the very least quite hard to reliably reconcile. Effective altruism is about doing the best thing possible, morally, with the footnote that something addressing existing problems now is obviously better than most things.

Longtermism is simply taking that one sentence definition of “doing the best thing morally” and then insisting that the only valid definition of this “best thing” is sacrificing everything we need to here and now in the name of colonizing other galaxies in a few million years.