Thank you for the review, I look forward to reading the book. I’m curious whether there are any changes to Singer’s views on killing animals and replaceability arguments in the books. In the previous versions of Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, Peter Singer seems to argue at the same time that:
If a being is not self-aware and doesn’t have a continuous psychological identity, then the satisfaction of their future preferences doesn’t matter.
The creation of a happy sentient being is net-positive.
The combination of these two views seems contradictory to me. If the creation of a happy sentient being is good, surely the continuation of that life should also be good.
Discussing conscientious omnivorism, on p.191, he writes that he “remain[s] in doubt whether it is good to bring into existence beings who can be expected to live happy lives and whether this can justify killing them.”
Two pages earlier, he explicitly notes a change in view:
In the first edition of this book, I rejected Leslie Stephen’s argument (that conscientious omnivorism is good for animals) on the grounds that it requires us to think that bringing a being into existence confers a benefit on that being—and to hold this, we must believe that it is possible to benefit a nonexistent being. This, I wrote, was nonsense; but now I am less sure that it is. After all, most of us would agree that conceiving a child who we know will have a genetic defect that would make their life painful and short would harm the child. Yet if we can harm a nonexistent child, surely we can also benefit a nonexistent child. To deny this, we would need to explain the asymmetry between the two cases, and that is not easy to do.
In terms of ‘replaceability’, note that even if continuing a (happy) life is good, it doesn’t follow that it’s better than killing with replacement. The replacement might be just as good, after all. To avoid that implication, you need something like individual-directed reasons to generate an asymmetry between killing and failing to create. (Though even then, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that short-lived happy lives are better than no lives at all.)
Thank you for the review, I look forward to reading the book. I’m curious whether there are any changes to Singer’s views on killing animals and replaceability arguments in the books. In the previous versions of Animal Liberation and Practical Ethics, Peter Singer seems to argue at the same time that:
If a being is not self-aware and doesn’t have a continuous psychological identity, then the satisfaction of their future preferences doesn’t matter.
The creation of a happy sentient being is net-positive.
The combination of these two views seems contradictory to me. If the creation of a happy sentient being is good, surely the continuation of that life should also be good.
Discussing conscientious omnivorism, on p.191, he writes that he “remain[s] in doubt whether it is good to bring into existence beings who can be expected to live happy lives and whether this can justify killing them.”
Two pages earlier, he explicitly notes a change in view:
In terms of ‘replaceability’, note that even if continuing a (happy) life is good, it doesn’t follow that it’s better than killing with replacement. The replacement might be just as good, after all. To avoid that implication, you need something like individual-directed reasons to generate an asymmetry between killing and failing to create. (Though even then, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that short-lived happy lives are better than no lives at all.)
Thank you very much for taking your time to provide the quotes, I really appreciate it.
You’re welcome! (To whoever is downvoting their polite comment: why?)