Benjamin Britten: A Bio-Bibliography. Cecilia's DayEdward Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, Peter singer essay Craggs 3. Consequently, we may neglect them entirely. Order original essay sample specially for your assignment needs. Given her incapacity to reason, recognize others, or see herself existing over time, his mother is no longer a person as defined by Singer. True, there are differences of size, location, dependency, and development, but these are morally irrelevant, peter singer essay. Immigration Ethics and Social esponsibility: Immigration and Amnesty in the United States The question of immigration, especially in this country, is ever-present.
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Peter Singer Explication of Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" Peter Singer's objective in "Famine, peter singer essay, Affluence, and Morality" is to raise activism in the general public with regard to ending famine and conditions of abject poverty. The focus of the article concerns the public's need to take greater action. His argument stems from his view that "At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not peter singer essay to the situation in any significant way" 1. Thus, people have a moral obligation to assist those who are impoverished, and even those in remote locations should not be excluded from aid. A main focus of Singer's article concerns moral utility, peter singer essay, and exactly how much people are morally obligated to provide to those who are impoverished.
Singer argues that there has traditionally been an overly peter singer essay distinction between duty and charity; people are quick to fulfill their duties, while charity is viewed…. against Peter singer essay Euthanasia on Life Support In his essay, Voluntary Euthanasia: A Utilitarian Perspective, Peter Singer reviews ethical arguments regarding voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide from a utilitarian perspective. Thesis: Singer establishes a solid grounding for the ethicality of legalizing voluntary euthanasia by arguing that the human right to pursue their notion of the good should be respected.
Also, he satisfactorily disposes of common objections to legalization by showing them to be either manageable or premature. Explanation of Singer's Position Singer peter singer essay that, from a utilitarian perspective, the legalization of voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would be a desirable reform. He reasons that the objections against Euthanasia based on the availability of alternative treatments can be resolved through procedures to certify that such treatments are insufficient. He then addresses the only viable objection, that legalizing voluntary euthanasia will lead to a slippery slope of increased non-voluntary euthanasia decisions. He disposes…. Bibliography Singer, P. October 1, Voluntary euthanasia: A Utilitarian Perspective. Bioethics, 17, Prowse, M.
January 4, FT Peter singer essay - THE FRONT LINE: Don't take liberties with the right to die, Financial Times. Singer, Famine, Affluence, peter singer essay, Morality," Peter Singer, discuss: a. Explain Singer's goal article, peter singer essay, present Singer's argument supports position. Explain counter-arguments Peter singer essay position addresses article, peter singer essay, summarize Singer's responses counter-arguments, peter singer essay. Singer argues that it is just as immoral for a First World nation to refuse to offer aid to a nation in the developing world as it is to refuse to save a child from drowning in a shallow pond if the personal risks and costs to the individual are nil other than getting one's clothes dirty.
The reasons we do not aid these countries is because they subjectively seem very far away, even though real children are dying…. Reference Singer, P. Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 3 : Famine, Affluence, Morality Peter Singer's principle goal of "Famine, Affluence and Morality" is to get members of society to alter their contemporary conceptions of morality. His primary means of achieving this goal is to get people to rethink the notion of giving charity to those in need.
He utilizes the destitution of people in Bengal as a case study in which he urges the affluent to change their view of morality so that they donate money and time to help the indigent. The author's assumption is that by getting people to understand the moral obligation in helping those in need, such as those in Bengali who have been ravaged by "Constant poverty, a cyclone, peter singer essay, and civil war" Singer,p. This change in their thinking will then influence their propensity for aiding other people in other situations outside of…. References Singer, peter singer essay, P.
Singer, P. Famine, peter singer essay, Affluence, And Morality by Peter Singer Peter Peter singer essay article is intended to provoke thought on the issue of the more fortunate's moral obligation toward the less fortunate. Singer uses the famine in East Bengal to claim that affluent countries and individuals have a moral obligation to give far more than they do to help relieve the suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care experienced in the region at the time. Singer argues that people who live in affluent countries must radically change their way of life and their conception of morality so that they will become committed to helping those in need. He asserts that "…the way people in relatively affluent countries react to a situation like that in Bengal cannot be justified; indeed the whole way we look at moral issues -- our moral conceptual scheme -- needs to be altered, and with….
References Corbett, B. Moral obligation to distant others. Webster University. html Driver, J. The history of utilitarianism. TheStanford encyclopedia of philosophy, peter singer essay. Edward N. Zalta ed. Retrieved August 24,from. Famine, Affluence, and Morality" by Peter Singer introduces its readers to numerous social issues that Singer states have been vastly ignored. The issues deal with the lack of progress in the betterment of society and although the article was originally written more than four decades ago, the situation around the globe remains unchanged. Singer's goal in this article is to present a side not widely taken.
To him, the social problems infesting the lives of individuals seem to be quite obvious, yet his discontent with people's attitudes is quite apparent peter singer essay this article. His primary argument in the article however, is that in order to solve the issues that he sees as being obviously manageable is to give to those who peter singer essay it most. Throughout the article he points out to these exact societal problems and the financial turmoil that various communities around the world were facing at the…. References: BBC. Ethics Guide: Argument against charity. shtml Gallager, M. The world at seven billion. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved 22 April from. Singer's goal is a very noble one.
Through his article, Singer is attempting to dispel many of the more common notions of moral obligation and charity. His article attempts to provide the reader with concrete notions peter singer essay moral obligation as they relate to overall human behavior. He peter singer essay various notions such as the need to help others irrespective of proximity or geographic preference. Singer, through his article also provides evidence as to the absurd thinking prevailing in the developed nations regarding charity. I particularly applaud how Singer contrast's man's desire for clothes with the need to preventing starvation.
In the article Singer shows how peter singer essay unnecessarily spend money on items that provide no moral benefit to society, while others in neighboring countries are starving. The goal of this article is for those in the developed nations to rethink how they regard moral obligation and charity. The article's goal is also…. References: 1. Cottingham, John Western philosophy: an anthology. ISBN 2. Shafer-Landau, Russ Ethical theory: an anthology. ISBN Pojman, Louis P. Moral philosophy: a reader. SINGE Euthanasia The Singer debate 'are there some lives not worth living:' The sanctity of life and utilitarianism Professor Peter Singer is a well-known utilitarian who advocates the right of parents to commit infanticide based upon utilitarian premises: he argues that the resources expended by keeping such children alive are too peter singer essay and it would make more sense to allow families to adopt instead healthy children with a greater chance at happiness.
Disability activist Harriet McBryde Johnson, who says that she would not be alive if this type of calculus had been employed notes: "But like the protagonist in a classical drama, Singer has his flaw. It is his unexamined assumption that disabled people are inherently 'worse off,' that we 'suffer,' that we have lesser 'prospects of a happy life'" Johnson However, peter singer essay, Johnson also argues against assisted suicide entirely, even with the consent of the person who feels…. References Doerflinger, J, peter singer essay. Assisted suicide: Pro-choice or anti-life? Johnson, H. Unspeakable conversations. The New York Times. Rachels, J. The morality of euthanasia. Peter singer essay postmodernist writing that finally ends up having a dialogue with itself reveals an idea common to most of the postmodern art: that language and formulations, as means of expression, are peter singer essay a means of finding the peter singer essay of something, and that most often, meanings do not reside out of language.
But, at the same time, Handke also demonstrates that the life can sometimes be to terrible peter singer essay be expressed in language. The book ends, significantly, with the same Handke sitting at his desk and reading the article about the suicide of a woman. It is not only that peter singer essay writing turns upon itself, peter singer essay, to reveal that the most important subject of the book has not been altogether elucidated and has not been given meaning to yet, but also, the fact that the author is in front if a piece if a newspaper article relating this event is crucial: the….
Works Cited Handke, Peter a Sorrow Beyond Dreams, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, Klinkowitz, Jerome the Self Apparent Word, Fiction as Language, Language as Fiction Illinois: Southern Illinois Press, peter singer essay, Wertheimer, Alison a Special Scar: The Experience of the People Bereaved by Suicide, New York: Routledge, peter singer essay, Puff the Magic Dragon " by Peter, Paul, and Mary During the s, one of the revolutionary developments that changed the landscape of American culture and history was the establishment of the Hippie Movement. The Hippies, as the people of this movement were called, popularized the "apolitical counterculture," wherein the Hippies did not subsist to "materialism, convention of the societyand authority.
With drugs and rock music being the main motivators that shaped American culture during the s, many music bands had emerged, which glorifies the new principle behind the Hippie Movement. esides rock music, traditional folk music came into being once again, only this time, a mixture of rock influence was infused with traditional folk music.
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For Singer, infanticide may be wrong in some cases, but only for its impact on other interested parties. On the other hand, killing a defective newborn is not morally equivalent to killing a person. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him. In the end, Singer rejects transcendent human rights as a fiction. Nonetheless, while his case for infanticide entices many academic liberals, it is seriously flawed for at least six reasons. Actions are morally right if they increase happiness and decrease pain for the greatest number of people. Some crimes, however, such as rape and murder, are wrong in themselves and cannot be justified with an appeal to overall happiness.
Common sense dictates that we weigh both the rational intent of an act deontological ethics with its foreseen consequences utilitarian ethics. Say, for example, that killing a Christian in the Roman Coliseum enabled 50, people to experience pleasure at the expense of only one person experiencing pain; clearly the happiness of the thousands would exceed the pain of one Christian, but would that make the act just? If Singer replies that the pain of the Christian outweighs the pleasure of the crowd, how does he know this? What if the tortured victim were not a Christian but a suicidal masochist who actually enjoyed the perverse treatment? It is one thing to say that critical thinking distinguishes us as human persons. It is quite another to say that your right to live depends on how intelligent you are.
Consequently, the intellectually and artistically gifted would be free to maximize their pleasure at the expense of those less intelligent. Presumably, your rights as a person would increase, stabilize, and then decrease in this process. Actually, we are not far from that now. In one sense, his argument was nothing new. A century ago, Darwin and his followers used it to dehumanize women. In The Descent of Man in Relation to Sex , Darwin wrote:. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, history, painting, sculpture, music inclusive of both composition and performance , history, science, and philosophy, the two lists would not bear comparison.
We may also infer, from the law of the deviation from averages… [that] the average mental power in man must be above that of women. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without a doubt, there exists some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as for example, of a gorilla with two heads. Consequently, we may neglect them entirely.
Is Scott Klusendorf the fetus or newborn identical to Scott Klusendorf the adult pro-life apologist? Is he the same person, though his body has changed over time? According to Singer, the answer is no. When I think of myself as the person I am now, I realize that I did not come into existence until sometime after my birth. Consider the person under general anesthesia. Like the early fetus, he is currently not conscious and has no concept of himself existing over time. According to the functionalist view, he is not a person! This is absurd. One might object that unlike the fetus and the newborn, the person under anesthesia once did and likely soon will function as a self-aware entity. He is therefore still a person i. This objection is flawed, for it admits that something other than self-awareness defines personhood.
To claim that a human person can be functionally self-aware, become nonself-aware, and then return to a state of self-awareness assumes there is some underlying personal unity to this individual that allows him or her to maintain his identity while unconscious i. while he is unable to function as a person. If not, then we must make the bizarre claim that a new person pops into existence once the anesthesia wears off. As Rae and Cox explain, the reason Scott Klusendorf the fetus is identical to Scott Klusendorf the adult is that I possess a human nature or essence that not only makes certain functions abilities possible but also allows me to retain my personal identity through change.
It is therefore the underlying essence of a thing, not its functional abilities, that determines what it is. Consider an illustration provided by Francis Beckwith. Is Uncle Jed before the coma identical to Uncle Jed after? Is he the same person? To save expenses for the family, could doctors have killed him during his extended sleep simply because he was not functioning as a person? If Singer holds to the functional view of human persons, it would be difficult to say why it would be wrong to kill Uncle Jed while he is comatose; yet, it clearly would be morally wrong to kill him while in that state because although he cannot currently function as a person, he still has the inherent capacity to do so.
Again, one might object that Uncle Jed is a person during the coma because, unlike the fetus, he once functioned as one and probably will again after he wakes up. This objection fails, however, as Beckwith explains:. We can change the story a bit and say that when Uncle Jed awakens from the coma he loses nearly all his memories and knowledge including his ability to speak a language, engage in rational thought, and have a self-concept. He would then be in the exact same state as the standard fetus, for he would have the same capacities as the fetus. Perhaps the abortion advocate would bite the bullet and say that there is no human nature that allows me to maintain my identity through bodily change and that personal identity is nothing more than a string of psychological experiences connected by memory.
Uncle Jed before the coma is therefore not identical to Uncle Jed after, but he is a new person with new memories that we will call Uncle Jed b ; but this denial of human nature will not do. What if five years later Uncle Jed b suddenly regains his lost memories? Is there now another Uncle Jed c , or are we back to Uncle Jed a? Put simply, Uncle Jed before the coma is identical to Uncle Jed after. He is the same person. The only difference is one of function ability , not essence or nature. The same is true of Scott Klusendorf the fetus and Scott Klusendorf the adult. My human nature is present from the moment I begin to exist. If I am wrong about this, then you are literally not the same person you were five years ago when your body was made up of different physical elements.
Sure, you have changed, but it is you who changed. Your thoughts and memories cannot exist unless you first existed. You can exist without them, but they cannot exist without you. Using an illustration taken from J. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, consider a man entering a room. During all stages of entering, the man must first exist in total to do the entering. Likewise, someone cannot be in the process of becoming a human person, since one must first exist in order to enter any process; nor can we say that the fetus becomes a person as it develops, since he or she must first exist in order to do the developing. Drawing another illustration from Moreland and Rae, imagine the case of newborn twins named Bill and Bob, both born unconscious.
Bob, meanwhile, did not experience a similar self-awareness, though he too will emerge from the coma at the same moment as Bill. Suppose it is one day before both will wake up. The needs of the suffering in Bengal should be given the same consideration by a person in London as those of the poor in his neighborhood. Onora declares that as humans, we have obligations that include helping or being beneficent to others. The argument that we have a moral obligation to assist the suffering though our excess funds is objectionable. This proposition by singer does not consider the rights that people have over their possessions. Arthur asserts that the argument made by Singer that we should always prevent harm to others if this does not necessitate the sacrifice of something of comparable moral importance fails to consider that individuals have a moral right over their possessions.
Each person is entitled to keep his possessions and this takes precedence over the duty to help. The declaration by Singer that people have a duty to give away their excess money to charity is not in line with utilitarianism. Singer challenges the traditional notion of charitable giving by declaring that giving should be a moral duty as opposed to a personal choice. Singer declares that it is wrong not to give to charity and the failure to give is tantamount to killing the individuals who might have benefited from our aid. This argument is wrong since without a contract or promise made between the two parties, the suffering people are owed no rights by the wealthy.
Refusing to help the suffering would not be morally wrong since it does not violate the rights of the suffering since, to begin with, they did not have the rights. Arthur declares that the decision to help a stranger in need as in the Bengal situation is not the result of the right that the suffering have. If he chooses not to help, he cannot be accused of immoral conduct. People work hard to obtain physical possessions and they therefore deserve the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Arthur declares that failure to reward those who work hard would be morally wrong since it is unfair. This proposal overlooks the fact that an individual is entitled to enjoying his earnings. Humans have divided themselves into different subunits based on geography, language, religion, and other considerations.
Arguably the most important division is that of nationality. The nation-state requires certain resources from its members and in return it provides numerous benefits including security. When faced with the decision of which group of suffering people to assist, an individual is most likely to give priority to those nearest to him. In addition to this, proximity is relevant since it contributes to the efficiency with which aid is delivered. Human suffering is an undesirable condition that should be eliminated through all possible means. The paper highlighted the strengths in the argument made by Singer.
His premise that alleviating suffering is the moral thing to do is supported by utilitarianism. Singer is also right in observing that the rich can afford to help the suffering without having to make huge sacrifices. In addition to this, the premise that a person should not enjoy his excess money is unfair since the individual is entitled to enjoy the rewards of his labor. While it can be agreed by all people that human suffering is undesirable and efforts should be made to eliminate it, the suggestions made by Singer are not the answer. Solutions that consider the rights and entitlement of the benefactor would be more appropriate and moral. Paul, Minnesota, , pp. Need a custom Essay sample written from scratch by professional specifically for you? certified writers online.
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