See the link above for an interesting article by Peter Singer in the Guardian. Given my general dislike of his work, it is gratifying to see that the great majority of reader comments are critical of his argument.
The article is about moral intuitions, and research that indicates how cross-cultural they are. Singer argues:
...the fact that our moral intuitions are universal and part of our human nature does not mean that they are right. On the contrary, these findings should make us more sceptical about relying on our intuitions. There is, after all, no ethical significance in the fact that one method of harming others has existed for most of our evolutionary history, and the other is relatively new. Blowing up people with bombs is no better than clubbing them to death. And the death of one person is a lesser tragedy than the death of five, no matter how that death is brought about. So we should think for ourselves, not just listen to our intuitions.
While it would be wrong to say that reason has no place in moral decision making, it seems to me that Singer's point is exactly the opposite lesson that one should learn from modern history.
The great warning from the 20th century is surely that rational and logical arguments can be extremely successful in convincing large numbers of people to act in a way that is appallingly immoral and contrary to moral intuition. If anything, the remedy for the genocides, political pogroms and ideologically induced famines would have been an emphasis on moral intuition, not scepticism of it.
Singer's article deals with a philosopher's hypothetical dilemma involving a runaway rail trolley and how to think about the most moral action to take, given that all outcomes will involve at least some loss of life. For those who know Singer's controversial views on the disabled, this comment by "Shrover" following the Guardian article is pretty funny:
Prof Singer omitted his preferred scenario, where you can push a disabled person in front of the trolley and save five lives without costing one.
The best simple explanation of the main objection to Singer's utilitarian approach is given by "Calgacus" further down in the comments:
Singer is obviously a utilitarian. Utilitarianism is very limited on its own and leads to many obviously wrong actions - only a combination of utilitarianism with deontological principles can give a good guide to moral choices.
In other words a result which e.g saves one more life than it costs is not necessarily right if it involves murdering someone. We should do what avoids suffering/produces happiness for the greatest number of people provided that we don't do anything clearly wrong in the process (e.g stealing food from someone who has more than they need may be moral if you're starving but murdering someone never is).
My distrust of Singer is further reinforced.UPDATE: by coincidence (I think), there are a couple of stories relating to the "runaway train" moral dilemma at news@nature and Scientific American. The news @nature story puts it this way:
A runaway train is speeding down the tracks towards five workmen. You and a stranger are standing on a bridge over the track. The only way to save the five is to push the stranger in front of the train to his death, and his body will stop it from reaching them.
Do you push him?
Most people answer that they could not personally push a stranger to his death, even though more lives would be saved than lost. But a new study published online in Nature finds that people with damage to a particular part of the frontal lobe reach the opposite — alarmingly utilitarian — conclusion.
I like the phrase "alarmingly utilitarian"! My sentiments exactly.
Over at the Scientific American report, though, comes this quote, indicating a much more "scientific" attitude to the meaning of the study (emphasis mine):
"The decisions of VMPC patients are not amoral," says senior study author Antonio Damasio, formerly a University of Iowa neurologist and now director of the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute. "They are just different from the decisions of other subjects." He adds that these subjects seem to lack the human conflict between emotion and reason. "Because of their brain damage, they have abnormal social emotions in real life," says Ralph Adolphs, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology. "They lack empathy and compassion."
Funny how scientists often don't like to use the word "amoral", which goes back to my original point about Singer's article.
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