Suppose Pinker’s “pond” is filled with amniotic fluid. Utilitarianism must smuggle in any “oughts” it needs on grounds that cannot be provided by utilitarianism itself, such as how “utility” “ought” to be measured.įor example, long before Darwin and his ideas about “ the Preservation of Favoured Races” etc., the Romans thought it not only good but an actual duty to end the life of children who had physical defects. Yet no list of “is” statements of bare scientific facts plus reason can logically produce a single “ought” statement.
Later in the episode Singer lauds reason and utilitarianism. Russ Roberts: … I believe in God I think people are made in the image of the Divine.Įven atheist philosophers recognize the dramatic change that resulted from Christianity spreading this very different understanding that every human bears the image of God, not just my tribe, not just males, not just the citizens, not just those who are healthy. That seems terrible to us now, but only because of the spread of the influence of Christianity, which includes the Jewish Scriptures and the same recognition Russ shared. In ancient Rome before Christianity, it was considered completely ordinary and acceptable for parents to choose to intentionally abandon a female infant in the wild to be eaten by animals.
Suppose the abandoned child in Pinker’s pond is a girl. On the contrary, that doesn’t automatically follow at all. And, from the point of view of the child, it’s a bad thing that the child doesn’t have the opportunity to grow up and have a good life. Certainly, if you think about it from the position of if it were your own child, if you’re a parent, you would be in no doubt whatsoever that this is a terrible thing, for a parent to lose a child. Peter Singer: … That is, I think, something that pretty much everybody would agree with. What makes it wrong? It “is a bad thing.” It is effectively tautological to say that one should not do “a bad thing”, which makes Singer’s answer empty and leads to circularity.
Peter Singer: …The answer that I give is because the death of a child is a bad thing. Russ Roberts: Why should I ? I agree with you that you should, but I’m curious why you think one should save that child.
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