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Hard Cases in Hard Places: Singer's Agenda for Applied Ethics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Peter A. Danielson  and
Chris J. MacDonald
Peter A. Danielson
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
Chris J. MacDonald
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

It may seem that there is no need to review such a well-known book. This is the second edition of Peter Singer's text, Practical Ethics. The first edition has been widely used and influential; indeed for many it defines the field of applied ethics. The field is lucky; rarely is such popular work so carefully argued, so factually well informed and so well written. In addition, it is unusual for the author of a basic text to be so daring. Peter Singer deserves credit for placing the interests of animals and famine victims on the agenda of applied ethics, and for making that agenda so prominent in public fora. But it behooves us to scrutinize carefully the power of definitive works as well. What sets the agenda is, for that very reason, more difficult to assess critically.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Summer 1996 , pp. 599 - 610
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1996

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References

Notes

1 Singer seems to go out of his way to block even this weak claim, with his example of equality including those who “would kill a stranger for $100 if they could get away with it” (p. 17).

2 Steven Brams and D. Kilgour use a game like this to show how rational agents can stabilize co-operation by threatening to defect (Brams, Steven and Kilgour, D., "National Security Games," Synthese, Vol. 76 [August 1988]: 183–200). Thanks to Kenn Crossley for bringing this article to our attention.Google Scholar

3 These events are described in Singer's Appendix, pp. 337-59. For a well-balanced discussion by German authors, Schöne-Seifert, see Bettina and Rippe, Klaus, “Silencing the Singer: Antibioethics in Germany,” Hastings Center Report (November-December 1991), pp. 20–27.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 23.4 p. 23.

5 Ibid., p. 225. p. 22.

6 Danielson, Peter, "The Lockean Proviso," in Peter Vallentyne, ed., Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on Gauthier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), criticizes David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (London: Oxford University Press, 1986) in this regard.Google Scholar

7 Singer himself stresses this in his stimulating book, The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981).Google Scholar