Not sure for how long its on sale.
Havnt read it yet but tis a classic from what ive heard.
Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save eBook 99c for Limited Time
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I have Yet to read Peter Singer's Work, I was recommended to read Peter Singer's writings, At a lecture, We were given an interesting hypothetical question:
"If you saw 1 kid drowning in the sea, and you could save him, buy jumping in the water to save him. Would you?
What if you were wearing a $100 shoe or watch or what ever. Which you would have no time to take off, and would be destroyed if you chose to save the kid, would you still save the kid?If your answer was yes. What if you knew you could donate the $100 to save 5 kids in Africa?
Are you going to put the life of that one drowning kid, ahead of the 5 others?"Forgive me if i got the hypothetical question wrong, but i think it was something along the lines of that.
The drowning child argument. This is the version I've heard :
Imagine you're walking along wearing $100 shoes near a pond and you notice a child drowning. You can, without risk to yourself, save the child from drowning. But you'll wreck your shoes in the process. Here's the argument:
1) You ought to save the drowning child. If you failed to save the child for the sake of your $100 shoes, you would be doing something extremely morally repugnant.
2) There is no morally relevant difference between the drowning child in front of you and some child dying in the developing world of preventable diseases for which good aid organizations exist.
3) So, you ought to donate significantly more to help folks dying in the developing world of preventable diseases, and failing to do so is as bad as failing to save the drowning child.
3) doesn't logically follow from 2)
Every time you save a drowning child coz you dont teach them to stop drowning they drown again & their 6 children & your 4 children drown again while you save them they still keep drowning !?
"Give a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, he'll be warm the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
There is no "morally relevant" difference - however it is human nature to value the lives of those physically or emotionally close to us higher than others.
Would it emotionally impact on someone higher if:
a) 100,000 people died in Central Africa from preventable illness
b) 10,000 people died in Northern China of a natural disaster
c) 1,000 people died in the USA from a terrorist attack
d) 100 people died in Newcastle from bushfires
e) 10 people died in your home city from a whacko with a gun
f) your parent dies of natural causesPeople's emotional connection to the incidents listed get more relevant, prompting them to further action based upon how close it all is.
Every life may have the same moral weight but not the same emotional worth.
I guess if you found the shoe's discounted on ozbargain you could save the kids in africa and the little guy drowning in front of you.
I dont see the pt of the last part. That's like saying you can potentially live on bread and milk and donate all your money in which you'll save a lot more kids, but who does that….!
Where as the first part make complete sense in that you view a life is more important than your material stuff of a certain value!
I prefer
"the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"
Anyone manage to actually buy it?
The links under "Buy this eBook from: " didn't work for me. I only tried Amazon ("Price unavailable") and Google Play ("book not found") and 3 others but they are the main ones - region lockout maybe?
Anyone manage to actually buy it?
No, I'm going to donate 99c to Unicef
This guy has some pretty messed up opinions, including:
a) Killing a newborn isn't wrong, because a newborn isn't conscious of life, existence etc
Singer argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood—"rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness"—and therefore "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."
The last I heard, he hasn't outlined at what point does it become immoral to kill a child.
b) Sexual acts with animals isn't wrong, because the animal doesn't know what it is doing.
c) A disabled human being bares less value than a healthy animal
I would be interested in his take of point A and B, and if they overlap in anyway. If sexual acts with an animal isn't wrong, because the animal isn't aware of what it is doing, and his justification for infanticide is a baby's lack of self-consciousness… I'll stop there. A valid point though.
I find it ironic that this book bares the title it has, despite his some of his anti-human philosophies he follows.
Years back Peter Singer was my tutor at uni for Philosophy (ethics) and we really did not hit it off. This was before the whole 'you eat animals, why not have sex with them' argument. Even then he had some thought provoking arguments, although many of them would have jumps in logic that did not hold up well to close examination. Along the lines of all fish swim, so everything that swims is a fish. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but even so the pedantic side of me clashed with him. In hindsight I'm not convinced that he always believed what he was saying, more that he was proposing ideas and concepts for discussion…. sadly, like many academics, they do not realise that what they say may be taken at face value and/or misinterpreted outside of academia. So yep, I'll save my $0.99
I recently heard him talking about the sex with animals comments he has made. Basically he said that the original statement was in the context of a film review not a prescription for a satisfying relationship.
He also said that he did not think sexual relationships with animals were likely to be a "healthy" thing but that people who are engaged in them with animals that appear to be "consentual" should not be treated as criminals and thrown into the same boat as those who seek sexual gratification from "abusing" animals.
Personally, i find him a little self-righteous. But it is important to realise that he says things primarily to stimulate peoples thinking about things (all be it whilst steering their thinking towards his). As opposed to preaching his beliefs like some sort of religious figure or totalitarian politician.
If you can help others,by all means help them. If you can't, at least refrain from hurting them …and the world will be a better place.
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