Sorry if this is Ethics 101 stuff but I'm having trouble understanding Peter's Preference Utilitarianism and other Rights theorists on existential rights/values and desires.
I've done a unit on his Sentient/Animals interests/rights and I think I've dug up how current rights theorists derive rights from having desires.
But I have problems with how Peter deals with existential 'rights' or right to life esp for non persons.
If anyone could give me an overview I'd appreciate it then I'll spell out my particular concerns.

Hi, SJM. I can't recall whether "rights" is a term that Peter uses or avoids. Anyway, I'll describe his position as I remember it:

non-persons should be treated in accordance with their desires. Non persons are defined, if I recall correctly, as those who do not plan their futures, so most of their desires will be rooted in the here and now. e.g. "I do not want pain", "I do not want to die", "I want to be around my family".

If we want to exploit a non-person for food, for example, we need to weigh their preferences against our own. e.g. do this animal's wish to be healthy, spend time with its family and so on outweigh my preference for a slightly tastier meal?

In the cases of persons, Peter Singer suggests there may be other considerations. For example, killing a person might thwart their plans to take a particular career path. It will send a wave of greif farther through person-to-person social networks.

Peter doesn't believe in 'inalienable rights', or rights that should never be broken. He believes that treating persons and non-persons in accordance with their desires is part of treating others as we would be treated.

I hope that's a good start SJM

edit: fixed the thinko (a 'typo' that did not result from a slip of the fingers') identified by DanielLC

You said "non-person" when you meant "person" in the second line of the fourth paragraph.

Wouldn't the wave of grief take place anyway, just later?

I'm reasonably confident that in Practical Ethics, Peter Singer explicitly rejects the idea of rights except as shorthand for a more complicated set of ideas (which, I'd assume, would be a rule-based preference utilitarianism).

The impression he gave at the time was that he'd avoid the term where possible, but with the idea being so widespread he might resort to it accidentally (as an atheist might mutter 'for God's sake' when annoyed), or deliberately if it really would save time.

That was written about 30 years ago, though, so his views could have changed since. I would guess not, though - most of his subsequent work seems to have been exploring the consequences of his ideas, not fundamentally changing them.

Arepo wrote:I'm reasonably confident that in Practical Ethics, Peter Singer explicitly rejects the idea of rights except as shorthand for a more complicated set of ideas (which, I'd assume, would be a rule-based preference utilitarianism).

The impression he gave at the time was that he'd avoid the term where possible, but with the idea being so widespread he might resort to it accidentally (as an atheist might mutter 'for God's sake' when annoyed), or deliberately if it really would save time.

That was written about 30 years ago, though, so his views could have changed since. I would guess not, though - most of his subsequent work seems to have been exploring the consequences of his ideas, not fundamentally changing them.

Yes I know he doesn't use rights in the Rights theorist sense but in the shorthand or normative result/consequence. Sorry I wasn't clear.

DanielLC wrote:You said "non-person" when you meant "person" in the second line of the fourth paragraph.

Wouldn't the wave of grief take place anyway, just later?

No I meant non person. From what I understand you need sophisticated existential desires to be granted a right to life. Something only persons have.


#Though I would note that I can across one reference that children only fully understand the concepts of life and death on average in the 9-11th years so we can have persons that pass the self awareness mirror test at 18+ mnths that technically still don't have existential desires


I think I fully comprehend that. I also note that Peter's argument means that non person animals don't have a right to life.
My real difficulty is when he justifies existential normative results to 'normal' non person humans. In teh context we aren't supposed to be speciest.

RyanCarey wrote:Hi, SJM. I can't recall whether "rights" is a term that Peter uses or avoids. Anyway, I'll describe his position as I remember it:

non-persons should be treated in accordance with their desires. Non persons are defined, if I recall correctly, as those who do not plan their futures, so most of their desires will be rooted in the here and now. e.g. "I do not want pain", "I do not want to die", "I want to be around my family".

If we want to exploit a non-person for food, for example, we need to weigh their preferences against our own. e.g. do this animal's wish to be healthy, spend time with its family and so on outweigh my preference for a slightly tastier meal?

In the cases of persons, Peter Singer suggests there may be other considerations. For example, killing a non-person might thwart their plans to take a particular career path. It will send a wave of greif farther through person-to-person social networks.

Peter doesn't believe in 'inalienable rights', or rights that should never be broken. He believes that treating persons and non-persons in accordance with their desires is part of treating others as we would be treated.

I hope that's a good start SJM

I deal with the rights issue with Arepo sorry again for not being clear.

But Just to clarify as the lit suggests non persons generally don't have future orientated goals- though some animals do display so future planning behaviour- and technically a desire not to suffer isn't a desire to live now or in the future. It is just a brute desire firmly place in the present and tied to pain. So nothing controversial.

The trouble is neonates aren't persons and while I know his famous thought experiment with severely disabled orphans wasn't meant to say we should do this- it was meant to argue against speciesism- nor does it strictly say we shouldn't.

Now from what I understand Peter then goes onto use Preference Utilitarianism to say we cannot kill non person babies and infants because it would in affect/frustrate the parents preferences. But we do in fact have parents killing their kids so one could argue that by stopping them from killing their kid we are frustrating their preference. I know you will then say other people within the social network would then be affected. But since we ignore this for people that object to animals being killed for whatever reason or in fact Pro-Life conservatives it would seem to require us to ignore other social network concerns as well.

Another problem would be if we had in fact a growing movment who thought infanticide of non person humans was the next step, consistent with the current personhood arguments, or in fact had a whole society like the ancient Greeks or Romans that viewed infanticide as acceptable, I don't see how Peter would object. The infants don't have existential desires and the social network has no preferences being frustrated, so logically this should be ok when combining personhood based arguments with Preference Utilitarianism.

This could be tied in to problems and weighting of aggregation similar to the general slavery objection to Utilitarianism but this objection is even harder as no person is directy having their preferences frustrated.

There are a lot of parallels between questions being asked here and what I am discussing with PhilosopherKing in another thread. However I do not want to derail this thread, although I do not think I would by adding and contrasting the desirist approach to Peter's PSAU approach, I think it would help rather than hinder this particular debate.

If you ask I will explicate what I am implying here.

faithlessgod wrote:There are a lot of parallels between questions being asked here and what I am discussing with PhilosopherKing in another thread. However I do not want to derail this thread, although I do not think I would by adding and contrasting the desirist approach to Peter's PSAU approach, I think it would help rather than hinder this particular debate.

If you ask I will explicate what I am implying here.

If you can that would be great, I'll also read th other thread.