Interview with Peter Singer - On Global Poverty, Human Rights and Ethical Questions
Petr Přibyla - 28. Září 2011, rubrika Rozhovory
Témata: lidská práva, politická filosofie, práva zvířat
Where are the boundaries of our moral obligations in eradicating
global poverty? At what point can we speak of a fetus as a human being? Are we
capable of reaching objectivism in ethical questions? For what reason is it
necessary to reach reassessment of our view of human rights concept?
Peter Singer, Ira W. De Camp professor of bioethics in the Centre for Human
Values at Princeton University and Laureate professor at University of
Melbourne, has been standing at the forefront of debates about our ethical
obligations and approaching global poverty, euthanasia, abortions and animal
rights for more than three decades.
The Animal Liberation (1975) book is widely considered as a bible of modern animal rights movement, therefore it is not a surprise, that The New Yorker labeled Peter Singer as „the most influential living philosopher“ and in 2005 Time magazine included him amogst 100 most influential people in the world“. From the other publications we should mention e.g.: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology (1981), Practical Ethics (1979), A Companion to Ethics (1991), Rethinking life & death: the collapse of our traditional ethics (1994), A Companion to Bioethics (1998), One World: The Ethics of Globalization (2006), The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (2006), and The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (2009).
While attending his lecture „Animal Liberation: Retrospect and Prospect“
at the University of Melbourne, Peter Singer agreed to provide an exclusive
interview to Czech Centre for
Human Rights and Democratization, interview by Petr Pribyla.
Within political philosophy you have been standing at the forefront of
utilititarianistic perspective towards global poverty, saying we have the same
moral obligation to help someone who is standing right next to us as someone
being thousands miles away from us. Can you explain your utilitarianistic
approach?
What I am criticising is the argument that distance morally makes a difference.
In the past distance has made the difference because it has not really been
possible to help people in a distance, but today it is.
Some specific group of authors within political philosophy have been
defending argument that human beings have only negative obligation, e.g. don’t
cause a pain, do not let anyone suffer etc. Therefore anything that goes above
our negative obligation, as a positive obligation to help someone in need, is
simply a secondary matter.
That is why I started an article I wrote already in the 1970s with the example
about rescuing a child drowning in a pond right in front of you. Virtually
everybody would agree that you do have a moral obligation towards that child. If
you are passing by a pond and see a small child drowning and you can save the
child’s life but there is something crossing your mind like ruining a nice
pair of shoes, people would think, that it would be wrong to walk on and say
I do not want to ruin my shoes and I have no obligation to save that child. So
the view, which you suggested, is far outside the mainstream. That alone does
not say it would not be defensible. But you start with a burden of proving that
there is no obligation to rescue not even the child, which is so easily rescued.
There is a kind of libertarian view that you mentioned represented by people
like Robert Nozick, who are saying that there is no obligation, but I am simply
on the grounds of thinking that everybody’s interest matters and you
can’t give thousands and thousands times more weight to your own interest than
you give to those strangers. That is obviously what you are doing if you reject
the idea that you have no obligation to help somebody else.
According to the UN statistics more than 1.2 billion people—one in
every five on Earth—survive on less than $1 a day and on the other hand the
top 1% of the world’s richest people earn as much as the poorest 57%. Is it
morally justifiable to have such a wealth?
The problem is not whether the wealth is morally justifiable but the problem is
that those who are having the wealth are doing nothing to help the poor. This is
not justifiable and that’s what I object to. It is fine if people have
wealth because it is not a zero-sum game. It is not that if some people have
wealth it means that others are poor, but the thing is, if they are not helping
the poor and they are not doing the things that they could do. Then there is a
problem in justifying the wealth.
Within the last decades, a most of discussions about global justice and
solving global poverty have tightened themselves with a concept of existing
universal human rights. Where does your approach of practical ethics stand
towards the concept of universalism in human rights?
The concept of practical ethics is based on moral obligations that do not have
to go through arguments about human rights, that is true.
“The discussion about Asian values does not do justice to Asian tradition.”
However, even there we have to face questions dealing with objectivism
and particularism. There have been lively discussions about an existence of
so-called Asian values concerning human rights, which is implying relativism in
minimal standards of human rights as consequences of specific differences
between western and eastern traditional values. Thus, if we step up into the
discussion of global justice through concept of practical ethics, are we than
able to reach any objectivism in moral questions? I.e. Aren’t the ethics and
ethical question, at the end, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to
choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one
lives?
Yes, I do think that some objectivism in ethics exists and that there are
values that by careful reflection and consideration people from any culture can
reach. The discussion about Asian values does not do justice to Asian tradition.
Certainly, what we have been discussing you can find in work of Asian
philosophers like Mencius who thinks there is an obligation of wealthy and
powerful to help the poor. Thus, I do not see any fundamental difference
between western and eastern traditional values on ethical questions.
International organizations and international systems as such are
usually blamed from a political utilitarianistic position for its
ineffectiveness, illegitimacy and being responsible for the situation of global
poverty. Should we not to be more concern, at the end, to solving the
ineffective international system than donating through charity? We can quite
often come across an argument saying, that individual direct donations relief
just a short-term solution and simply delays additional problems.
I am not interested in short-term solutions. There is all kinds of assistance
that we can get and those which are providing short term solutions are not as
good as the ones that are providing a long term sustainable solutions. But the
question is what is a long-term sustainable solution? And I think that we have
to give, from the wealth that we have available, to those most effective
organizations providing long-term solutions. There is a huge number of different
aid organizations following different strategies and we, as responsible donors,
our obliged to find those who are doing it. Fortunately, there are organizations
that are examining that. I have mentioned some in my book The Life You Can Save
and I talked about organizations like GiveWell who are trying to find out which
organizations are the most effective.
For example Brian Barry, well-known political philosopher saying, that
natural resources provide a relatively straightforward application of the idea
that what nobody can make any special claim on everybody has an equal claim on.
In this view, citizens of countries as United Arab Emirates flourishing through
having access to the oil under their surface, having no more rights to drill for
them than citizens of some of the no resource-rich countries. Thus, Brian Berry
defending argument, that there should be an international income tax on
countries above some certain amount of GND and where the money would go to poor
countries.
That would be fine if countries would do that. That is a sort of social
welfare’s theme on a global level rather than on a national level. The money
would have to be used effectively and it is not that we want to get money to
every government no matter how effective it is in helping its people. What we
want to do is to raise the money as we just said and providing long-term
solutions. That’s what we have to do and if governments would tax their
citizens for this purpose, that would be fine, but since they do not, it is up
to us as individuals to do that job.
If we look at the ongoing economical crisis, is it too naive to expect
any reassessment of our moral obligations towards poor?
When the global financial crisis started, there were only few people who said
that we have to reassess what is important. I do not really see that a lot
reassessment is going on. Unfortunately, the global financial crisis affected
that some nations give less than otherwise they would give. That is a pity,
because people all of a sudden felt that they are not so wealthy. But all
together I do not see that it is a huge impact. People are gradually starting
donating again and I hope it will continue.
Euthanasia
You have been also extensively covering the euthanasia issues within
last decades. If we look at Europe, since Netherlands started allowing
euthanasia, few other european countries as Belgium, Switzerland and recently
Luxemburg joined in. How do you see those changes in European societies and how
do you approach the euthanasia questions in general?
I suppose that people should be able to decide to end their lives, if they are
incurably ill and they do not wish to go on living. I do not see that it is in
the interest of state or anyone else to force them to live in conditions which
they regard as unacceptable. The way in which the laws work in Netherlands,
Belgium and Luxemburg and other countries you mentioned generaly shows that
euthanasia is something people want. I have to admit that I am surprise that
it spreads only slowly. But I do think it is spreading.
Let’s think of a situation of someone being in a coma, for many
years, no chances to get out of that condition and thus is not able to decide if
wants to go on living. Than, are we allowed to make that decision instead
him?
I think that patients should be able to decide whether they want to go on
living or not, once they are fully informed about their condition. Of course,
when they are in a coma they cannot decide, but maybe they will sign a
declaration beforehand that they would like to end their life in some situation
or maybe they have given power to some friend or relative to make that decision
for them. I believe that in these cases the decision should be respected.
If we stay with the autonomy of a person, lets say there is an adult,
who wants to commit a suicide, is fully aware of the consequences and is
rationally thinking. Is it morally justifiable to commit a suicide?
It can be morally justifiable, especially as you say, if they are fully aware of
the consequences and in a rational frame of mind, then it can be morally
justifiable. Especially if people are incurably ill, than, it is clearly
justifiable. So, the problem is to simply make sure that people are not
temporarily depressed by something that has happened and when there is nothing
seriously wrong with them. Abortion
If we step out of euthanasia, you have been also extensively writing
about abortions, which you have been defending. But if we look at the debates
about abortion in general, the discussions are circulating about one side
defending an individual right of a mother to decide what to do with her body and
on the other side stands interest in protecting prenatal life. How should we
deal with those conflicting rights?
First, you have to decide what the moral status of fetus is. I do not think
that either of this side, as you mentioned, are right on their own terms. The
crucial question really is whether the fetus has a right to live. I argue that
a fetus is not the kind of being that has absolute right to live, it does not
have any conscious of awareness of its own life, and therefore it is not wrong
to end its life before it properly begins. Thus, I do not see a problem in
ending a life of a fetus.
However, usually the decisions of highest and supreme courts are mainly
focused on finding answer to a question: when the fetus is becoming a human
being? In Europe abortion is usually allowed within first 12 weeks of
pregnancy, however the threshold varying from country to country. Thus, is the
question “when“ really the right sort of question we should be finding
answer for?
I do not think you can answer the question of when, unless you ask a question
of what is wrong with killing a human being. That is the basic question and that
is what you have to ask first. And if you are asking that question, the answer
really is that killing a being becomes most serious when the being has some
self-conception, some self-awareness of its own life, and of living over time.
A fetus never has that, therefore I do not see any problem with killing a
fetus if that is what the mother wants. And my view also implies that it is less
serious to end the life of a newborn infant than of an older child.
So if we stay with the newborn baby, we can think of a situation where a
child is born and diagnosed with an incurrable decease with no perspective of a
decent life as such, and his parents do not want to go on in his living and
better letting him to die?
Yes, I think that it can be justifiable. It will depend on the condition of
child and if other people would want to care of that child and how much that
child would suffer, but I certainly think that the child has not any kind of
absolute right to life which would makes it wrong to kill that child at the
early stage, speaking still about newborn infants.
Animal Liberation
“ What gives a being rights and what makes it wrong to treat being in a
certain way is not what species it belongs to but what capacities it has. And
the most fundamental of those capacities is to suffer or to enjoy
life.”
For more than four decades you have stood at the forefront of advocating
of animal rights. Your book Animal Liberation from 70’s has become a bible of
various animal liberation movements. On which presumptions do you conclude that
animals are having the same rights as human beings?
We have to ask the fundamental question, which is why we think that there are
human rights in a sense of rights that all members of the species homo sapiens
have but no members of any other species have? When you start thinking about
that than it becomes rather peculiar. Because why should membership of a certain
species give you rights? If there were beings from another planet who could
suffer in exactly the same way that we can, would it be right to say that
because they are from another species we do not need to care about their
suffering, and can treat them as we treat animals today just because they are
not members of our species? I think that the answer is clearly not, it would
not be right. What gives a being rights and what makes it wrong to treat being
in a certain way is not what species it belongs to but what capacities it has.
And the most fundamental of those capacities is to suffer or to enjoy life.
Since there are many billions of non-human animals that can suffer or enjoy life
than we do wrong if we ignore their interests in not suffering or enjoying life
simply because they happened not to be a member of our species of homo
sapiens.
Recently, the British house of Commons passed a motion directing the
government to impose a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses. At the same
time, the lower house of the Dutch parliament passed a law giving the Jewish and
Islamic communities a year to provide evidence that animals slaughtered by
traditional methods do not experience greater pain than those that are stunned
before they are killed. How do you see the progress which has been done in
protecting animal rights within last decades?
I think that they are actually very small ones. What you should have mentioned
and is million times more important than those things in fact are in farming. On
the 1st of January next year across the entire European union the standard of
conventional battery cages becomes illegal. That will be affecting hundreds of
millions of animals, not the very small number of animals that will be affected
by the two peaces of legislation you mentioned. And in a year and a half, in
January 2013 it will be illegal to keep pregnant sows in individual crates, as
they are standardly kept now. This is actually an enormous progress as compared
how things were twenty or thirty years ago since I have started writing about
those issues. But at the same time I would like to obviously go a lot further
because these reforms, important as they are, do not stop widespread cruelties
at the farms and cruelties to rise for food, to rise for fur as many other
animals are facing. So, we still have a long way to go but there is an
encouraging progress being made.
Thank you for the interview.
Petr Pribyla is a student of European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice and an intern at the Czech Centre of Human Rights and Democratization of Masaryk University.
Časopis pro politiku a mezinárodní vztahy
S podporou International Institute of Political Science v Brně