I'm afraid to say this but he make's me want to become a die-hard gun-toting lefty hating Texan. I'm sure I'll think of a rebuttal to him that fits my slightly left of center viewpoint.

* Pro-animal rights

* Pro-abortion and anti-abortion at the same time. Using anti-abortion arguments to argue that one can morally kill a newborn. He somehow extends being able to say, abort a fetus at 12 weeks gestation due to down syndrome - to being morally equivalent to full blown infanticide if the mother isn't up to looking after it. This sort of reasoning is often used by the religious right, but this chap endorses that saying it's perfectly moral.

* He holds a utilitarian philosophy, arguing that different lives hold different value and makes cases for eugenics

* At the same time he somehow manages to fit that all in to saving all the poor people in Africa, despite the fact from a utilitarian standpoint Ethiopians have no use to him what so ever. He gives no thought for overpopulation, despite being a self confessed greeny. So he appears to be a green eugenics nut job that actually believes in helping the African population double or even triple.

What am I missing here? I must say I'm more than a bit befuddled. This guy appears to be a well respected philosopher.


Any of you guys read any of his articles/books? I'd be interested to see AndyJs and Blutarskis opinions of him. Give me a few days to get over the shock from some of his arguments and I'll tear him a new ******** but for now I'm just starting to get to grips with what he's saying.

P.S Sorry this posts a bit muddled, I've been up for hours doing a medical ethics essay on clinical trials.

Utilitarian philosopher, eh?

We have one of those at my former university. Not actually much use now for anything other than entertaining visitors:



I'm inclined to believe that the benefit we get from him is less than the cost of cleaning his case and providing security to stop students from Kings College playing football with his head. On strictly utilitarian grounds, we should probably get rid of him.

From what little I know about Peter Singer, I suspect the same could be said about him...

BTW, where's Bentham's head? I mean, the real, creepy one. It used to be between his feet, right?

I think that after the incident with the King's students, they decided to keep it in a safer place.

This was before my time, so I never saw the real head.