Peter Singer on Utilitarianism, Influence, and Controversial Ideas

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Peter Singer is one of the world’s most influential living philosophers, whose ideas have motivated millions of people to change how they eat, how they give, and how they interact with each other and the natural world.

Peter joined Tyler to discuss whether utilitarianism is only tractable at the margin, how Peter thinks about the meat-eater problem, why he might side with aliens over humans, at what margins he would police nature, the utilitarian approach to secularism and abortion, what he’s learned producing the Journal of Controversial Ideas, what he’d change about the current Effective Altruism movement, where Derek Parfit went wrong, to what extent we should respect the wishes of the dead, why professional philosophy is so boring, his advice on how to enjoy our lives, what he’ll be doing after retiring from teaching, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded May 25th, 2023

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Photo credit: Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek

Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.
0:13.5	Learn more at mercatis.org.
0:16.2	For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit
0:21.1	ConversationsWithT Tyler.com.
0:26.7	Hello everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
0:30.4	Today I'm here with Peter Singer of Princeton University.
0:33.8	Peter is one of our most important and influential intellectuals.
0:38.0	For our purposes, what is new, there is a new and very much revised edition of
0:42.8	Peter's Classic Book, Animal Liberation.
0:45.6	It is now titled Animal Liberation Now, the Definitive Classic Renewed.
0:50.6	And by my estimate, it's about two thirds to three quarters new material.
0:54.4	Peter, welcome.
0:55.8	Thanks very much, Tyler. It's good to be with you.
0:58.3	When large language models make it possible for us to speak with dolphins,
1:02.6	what will be the first question you ask?
1:05.1	Ah, what do you think of humans maybe?
1:07.7	And what do you think they will say?
1:10.0	Not very, nothing very positive, that's for sure, because a lot of dolphins have
1:13.3	been caught in nets for catching tuna and impaled and to stop the meaning fish
1:18.8	that people want in some parts of the world.
1:20.9	I don't think they'll think too well of us.
	...

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