My interpretation of Peter Singer’s thesis is that we should be extremely cautious about acting on a philosophy that claims that an issue is extremely important, since we should be mindful that such philosophies have been used to justify atrocities in the past. But I have two big objections to his thesis.
First, it actually matters whether the philosophy we are talking about is a good one. Singer provides a comparison to communism and Nazism, both of which were used to justify repression and genocide during the 20th century. But are either of these philosophies even theoretically valid, in the sense of being both truth-seeking and based on compassion? I’d argue no. And the fact that these philosophies are invalid was partly why people committed crimes in their name.
Second, this argument proves too much. We could have presented an identical argument to a young Peter Singer in the context of animal farming. “But Peter, if people realize just how many billions of animals are suffering, then this philosophy could be used to justify genocide!” Yet my guess is that Singer would not have been persuaded by that argument at the time, for an obvious reason.
Any moral philosophy which permits ranking issues by importance (and are there any which do not?) can be used to justify atrocities. The important thing is whether the practitioners of the philosophy strongly disavow anti-social or violent actions themselves. And there’s abundant evidence that they do in this case, as I have not seen even a single prominent x-risk researcher publicly recommend that anyone commit violent acts of any kind.
I think some moral views, e.g. some rights-based ones or ones with strong deontological constraints, would pretty necessarily disavow atrocities on principle, not just for fairly contingent reasons based on anticipated consequences like (act) utilitarians would. Some such views could also still rank issues.
I think failing to act can itself be atrocious. For example, the failure of rich nations to intervene in the Rwandan genocide was an atrocity. Further, I expect Peter Singer to agree that this was an atrocity. Therefore, I do not think that deontological commitments are sufficient to prevent oneself from being party to atrocities.
You could have deontological commitments to prevent atrocities, too, but with an overriding commitment that you shouldn’t actively commit an atrocity, even in order to prevent a greater one. Or, something like a harm-minimizing consequentialism with deontological constraints against actively committing atrocities.
Of course, you still have to prioritize and can make mistakes, which means some atrocities may go ignored, but I think this takes away the intuitive repugnance and moral blameworthiness.
My interpretation of Peter Singer’s thesis is that we should be extremely cautious about acting on a philosophy that claims that an issue is extremely important, since we should be mindful that such philosophies have been used to justify atrocities in the past. But I have two big objections to his thesis.
First, it actually matters whether the philosophy we are talking about is a good one. Singer provides a comparison to communism and Nazism, both of which were used to justify repression and genocide during the 20th century. But are either of these philosophies even theoretically valid, in the sense of being both truth-seeking and based on compassion? I’d argue no. And the fact that these philosophies are invalid was partly why people committed crimes in their name.
Second, this argument proves too much. We could have presented an identical argument to a young Peter Singer in the context of animal farming. “But Peter, if people realize just how many billions of animals are suffering, then this philosophy could be used to justify genocide!” Yet my guess is that Singer would not have been persuaded by that argument at the time, for an obvious reason.
Any moral philosophy which permits ranking issues by importance (and are there any which do not?) can be used to justify atrocities. The important thing is whether the practitioners of the philosophy strongly disavow anti-social or violent actions themselves. And there’s abundant evidence that they do in this case, as I have not seen even a single prominent x-risk researcher publicly recommend that anyone commit violent acts of any kind.
I think some moral views, e.g. some rights-based ones or ones with strong deontological constraints, would pretty necessarily disavow atrocities on principle, not just for fairly contingent reasons based on anticipated consequences like (act) utilitarians would. Some such views could also still rank issues.
I basically agree with the rest.
I think failing to act can itself be atrocious. For example, the failure of rich nations to intervene in the Rwandan genocide was an atrocity. Further, I expect Peter Singer to agree that this was an atrocity. Therefore, I do not think that deontological commitments are sufficient to prevent oneself from being party to atrocities.
You could have deontological commitments to prevent atrocities, too, but with an overriding commitment that you shouldn’t actively commit an atrocity, even in order to prevent a greater one. Or, something like a harm-minimizing consequentialism with deontological constraints against actively committing atrocities.
Of course, you still have to prioritize and can make mistakes, which means some atrocities may go ignored, but I think this takes away the intuitive repugnance and moral blameworthiness.