THOUGHT LEADERS

The Ethics of Life

Peter Singer

Is human life really always sacred? Is Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection right – or left? Is charity a virtue or an obligation?

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How to Keep a New Year’s Resolution

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2010-01-04

We are not yet far into 2010, but studies show that fewer than half of those who make New Year’s resolutions manage to keep them for as long as one month. But there are steps that you can take to increase your chances of succeeding.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 1 Read: 5979

Rights for Robots?

Peter Singer and Agata Sagan Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-12-14

If machines can and do become conscious, will we take their feelings into account? The development of a conscious robot that (who?) was not widely perceived to have moral standing and interests worthy of consideration could lead to mistreatment on a large scale.... read

Comments: 4 Recommended: 0 Read: 5794

When Doctors Kill

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-11-13

Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the “slippery slope”: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die. There is no evidence for this claim, but recent revelations about what took place in a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina point to a genuine danger from a different source.... read

Comments: 4 Recommended: 2 Read: 6379

A Day for Planetary Justice

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-10-14

What we are doing to our planet, to our children and grandchildren, and to the poor, by our heedless production of greenhouse gases, is one of the great moral wrongs of our age. On October 24, people in countries around the world will stand up against this injustice. ... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 1 Read: 3794

The Quality of Mercy

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-08-31

When should we forgive or show mercy to wrongdoers? Three recent cases - the compassionate release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the reinstatement of American football player Michael Vick, and the first public expression of remorse by former Lt. William Calley, who in 1968 ordered the My Lai massacre - give ample reason to contemplate that question.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 5204

Kidneys for Sale?

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-08-14

The arrest in New York last month of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman whom police allege tried to broker a deal to buy a kidney, coincided with the passage of a law in Singapore that some say will open the way for organ trading there. Would legalizing the market for human body parts exploit the poor, or should the poor be free to choose?... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 6980

Selecting Our Children

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-07-14

In April, Germany’s parliament placed limits on the use of genetic diagnosis by insurers and employers. But many of the new law's provisions will be unenforceable in the absence of an international agreement, and some of them, by banning outright embryonic and pre-natal screening for genetic diseases, are ethically absurd.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 7988

Can Business Be Ethical?

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-06-15

In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, the economist Milton Friedman wrote that any business has only one social responsibility: "to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game." But that view is now being replaced with a vision of business management as an ethics-driven profession.... read

Comments: 3 Recommended: 0 Read: 9311

The Value of a Pale Blue Dot

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-05-14

This year, the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope, has been declared the International Year of Astronomy. The goal of the commemoration – to help the world’s citizens “rediscover their place in the universe” – now has the incidental benefit of distracting us from nasty things nearer to home, like swine flu and the global financial crisis.... read

Comments: 5 Recommended: 0 Read: 9324

Freedom of Religion or Freedom of Speech?	Peter Singer
Last month, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution, originally proposed by the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, condemning “defamation of religion” as a human rights violation. The resolution is non-binding, but if nations were to enact laws putting it into effect, they would clearly be interfering with freedom of expression.... read

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The Value of a Pale Blue Dot

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2009-05-14

Comments: 5 Recommended: 0 Read: 9324

Fear and Freedom on the Internet

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-01-18

Earlier this month it was reported that, at the request of China’s rulers, Microsoft shut down the Web site of a Chinese blogger that was maintained on a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces. The blogger, Zhao Jing, had been reporting on a strike by journalists at The Beijing News that followed the dismissal of the newspaper’s independent-minded editor.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 26649

Who Pays for Bird Flu?

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2005-11-10

Fifty years ago, American chicken farmers found that by keeping their birds in sheds they could produce chickens for the table more cheaply and with less work than by traditional farmyard methods. The new method spread: chickens disappeared from fields into long, windowless sheds. Factory farming was born. ... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 26338

The Revolutionary Ethics of Embryo Research

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2005-12-20

What appeared to be the most momentous scientific advance of 2005 is currently under siege. In June, the prestigious journal Science published an article by the South Korean scientist Woo-Suk Hwang and an international team of co-authors describing how they had developed what were, in effect, “made to order” lines of human stem cells cloned from an adult. Although the scientific validity of their research is now the subject of several separate investigations, it is no less important to examine its ethical implications.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 25502

Why Pay More for Fairness?

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-04-18

Marks & Spencer, a supermarket and clothing chain with 400 stores throughout Britain, recently announced that it is converting its entire range of coffee and tea, totaling 38 lines, to Fairtrade, a marketing symbol of “ethical production.” The chain already sells only Fairtrade tea and coffee in its 200 Café Revive coffee shops. It is also boosting its purchases of shirts and other goods made with Fairtrade cotton. The announcement came during “Fairtrade Fortnight,” a two-week promotion of Fairtrade products that included speaking tours by farmers from developing countries, telling Britons how Fairtrade has assisted their communities. ... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 25404

Devaluing Life

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-02-13

In August 2001, President George W. Bush told Americans that he worried about “a culture that devalues life,” and that he believed that, as President of the United States, he has “an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world.”... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 24773

Free Speech, Muhammad, and the Holocaust

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-03-01

The timing of Austria’s conviction and imprisonment of David Irving for denying the Holocaust could not have been worse. Coming after the deaths of at least 30 people in Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, and other Islamic countries during protests against cartoons ridiculing Muhammad, the Irving verdict makes a mockery of the claim that in democratic countries, freedom of expression is a basic right.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 24270

The Ethics of Eating

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-06-14

Global meat consumption is predicted to double by 2020. Yet in Europe and North America, there is growing concern about the ethics of the way meat and eggs are produced. The consumption of veal has fallen sharply since it became widely known that to produce so-called “white” – actually pale pink – veal, newborn calves are separated from their mothers, deliberately made anemic, denied roughage, and kept in stalls so narrow that they cannot walk or turn around.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 22746

The Great Ape Debate

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-05-16

In his History of European Morals, published in 1869, the Irish historian and philosopher W.E.H. Lecky wrote:... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 20938

Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away

Peter Singer Series: The Ethics of Life

2006-07-12

Would you be happier if you were richer? Many people believe that they would be. But research conducted over many years suggests that greater wealth implies greater happiness only at quite low levels of income. People in the United States, for example, are, on average, richer than New Zealanders, but they are not happier. More dramatically, people in Austria, France, Japan, and Germany appear to be no happier than people in much poorer countries, like Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 20007

The Hidden Costs of Money	Peter Singer
When people quote Saint Paul’s dictum that “Money is the root of all evil,” they usually have in mind not money, but the love of money. But new research shows that money itself, whether we are greedy for it or not, could be a problem.... read
Homosexuality is Not Immoral	Peter Singer
In recent years, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain have recognized marriages between people of the same sex. Several other countries recognize civil unions with similar legal effect. An even wider range of countries have laws against discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, in areas like housing and employment. Yet in the world’s largest democracy, India, sex between two men remains a crime punishable, according to statute, by imprisonment for life.... read

AUTHOR INFO

Peter Singer

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, One World, The President of Good and Evil, and editor of In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave.

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THOUGHT LEADERS

The Ethics of Life

Peter Singer

How to Keep a New Year’s Resolution

Rights for Robots?

When Doctors Kill

A Day for Planetary Justice

The Quality of Mercy

Kidneys for Sale?

Selecting Our Children

Can Business Be Ethical?

The Value of a Pale Blue Dot

The Value of a Pale Blue Dot

Fear and Freedom on the Internet

Who Pays for Bird Flu?

The Revolutionary Ethics of Embryo Research

Why Pay More for Fairness?

Devaluing Life

Free Speech, Muhammad, and the Holocaust

The Ethics of Eating

The Great Ape Debate

Happiness, Money, and Giving It Away

AUTHOR INFO

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